Treadmill
by Laudine
Summary: Chloe Gaynor enjoyed being normal.  But when she met Sherlock Holmes, her life would never be the same again.  Part 16: Chloe and Reggie Gregson investigate further, Chloe realizes something, and trouble ahead!
1. Chapter 1

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**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock." But Chloe Gaynor is mine.**

**Treadmill**

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Part One

_Hopelessly_

_I feel like there is something that I'll miss_

_Hopelessly _

_I feel like the window closes oh so quick_

_Hopelessly_

_I'm taking a mental picture of you now_

_Hopelessly_

_The hope is we have so much to feel good about_

-from the song "Good Life" by One Republic

Chloe always played Chopin when she worked. She liked Debussy, too, but the sudden adulation of "Clair de Lune" because of the _Twilight_ movies made her avoid Debussy altogether. She often got too wrapped up in what she was doing to pick up the CD player remote and change to the next song, and many times the song would be almost over by the time she noticed it was "Clair de Lune."

When she was home, Chloe Gaynor lived her life according to a schedule, because that was how she maintained some semblance of control over it. Wake up at six, take the dog for a walk, shower at seven, work and breakfast at eight, lunch at one, more work until four. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she went to ballet class at five-thirty. On Tuesdays and Thursdays it was doing one of her yoga DVDs at home. Then dinner at seven, and going to bed at eleven. Unless her father called.

And when her father called, it was always to go someplace to work on an upcoming book, some biography or historical thriller or what have you. And Chloe always jumped, because when her father sold a book, she always got a cut of it. This time it was Calais. He wanted to write a book on the tug-of-war between the British and the French over the city, and of course, he begged her to come, if only to help him keep his notes in order and to type up any scribblings he might have made while they were there. It still amazed her that her father insisted on using a typewriter and then mailing her the manuscript to type into her PC or laptop and edit along the way.

Mrs. Hudson watched Lilly. Mrs. Hudson always watched Lilly. And would get the mail. And would make sure no one broke into the apartment. Especially Crazy-Ass downstairs, as Chloe called him.

Not that Crazy-Ass would. But Crazy-Ass might because he was just crazy. There was always noise or something coming from downstairs, and Chloe always complained to Mrs. Hudson about it; somehow she didn't want to go down to his apartment for fear that she might catch him in some awkward moment or see something she didn't want to see.

When she came back from freezing her ass off in Calais while her father had his photographer take pictures of historic buildings, Crazy-Ass had a roommate. A perfectly normal roommate who would say good morning to her when she took Lilly out and held the door open for her and who she had caught a few times staring at her derriere.

The drug raid was the last straw, though. She called her mother in Minneapolis in tears because the guy downstairs might be a _druggie, _and selling drugs to boot. Her mother had told her to quit crying, because as long as she hadn't done anything wrong, the police wouldn't be after _her_.

"You didn't break any laws, did you, Chloe?" her mother asked her, tenderly but warily.

"For God's sake, Mother, _no!"_ Chloe exclaimed as she sat on the stairs in front of her flat with Lilly at her side.

"Then you don't have anything to worry about, do you?" her mother said brightly. "I have to get back to teaching. You just interrupted my class."

So smoothly her mother went back to teaching high-school English as Chloe sat on the stairs, watching as the police filed in and out of Crazy's apartment. One ascended the steps halfway and bent to pet Lilly, declaring that he loved Cavalier King Charles spaniels and maybe they could go out for Indian food because he knew of a really good place, but Chloe declined. His teeth were crooked in front, so he had almost a snaggletooth look. Not attractive, in her estimation. The police officer's lips thinned and almost sheepishly he went back downstairs to work.

Chloe watched curiously as the police all now filed out of the flat below, the roommate looking up at her helplessly with a shrug. She almost laughed. Crazy emerged and beckoned for the roommate to come back in, and he punctuated his walk into the hall with an annoyed scowl at Chloe. Chloe took it with a grain of salt.

When she found a nice bottle of wine set in front of her door after she came back from the next day's ballet class, though, and a hastily yet neatly written note of "Very sorry for the inconvenience" on a small card beside it, she smiled to herself. Maybe she shouldn't think so ill of people all the time.

* * *

Not even Chopin, Wagner, or the 1812 Overture could block out the noise from downstairs, as though someone were banging the walls repeatedly with a hammer or something. Lilly kept growling and snarling at the noises until Chloe turned off her CD player, closed her laptop, and sprang up to go downstairs and confront Crazy herself. Obviously Mrs. Hudson's gentle, maternal scolding wasn't working.

She saw someone leaving the flat below as she hurried downstairs, but the door to the flat was closed and she knocked on it three times, three very careful, yet concise knocks. The door opened swiftly, and she found herself looking up into the very curious face of the man whom she called Crazy himself-Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective. She'd seen his website-The Science of Deduction. Maybe he could put together another one-The Science of Being an Inconsiderate Asshole.

"Did you like the wine?" he asked her. "Or have you even tried it yet?" He was almost smug about it.

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not here about wine."

"So you haven't tried it. I thought it would be a waste, but well, _some_ people thought that the police being here a few weeks ago was disruptive to you, and that we should try to make up for it." He studied her now. "Chloe Gaynor, is it? Mrs. Hudson watches that little dog of yours when you're out of town?"

"On business," Chloe added crisply.

"Calais the last time." When he saw her raise her brows and open her mouth to say something, he continued, "Your wool coat was all wet when you returned, and I'd seen the ticket sent to you a few days before."

"What did you do-look in my mailbox?"

"It was put in mine by mistake, so I slid it into yours. I could see the destination through the window on the envelope for the address." He shook his head, his face taking on an interested air. "But you're not here to talk about that, are you?"

"No, I'm not," Chloe said. "I'm here to talk about the ridiculous amount of noise that comes from your apartment at the strangest hours of the day, particularly when I'm working!"

"Oh," he said, a smile beginning to play on his lips. _"That._ I'm sorry about that, Chloe-one of the pitfalls of my occupation."

"Regardless," Chloe said sharply, "it's ridiculous. I have to make a living, too, and if you can't keep the 'pitfalls of your occupation,' as you call them, out of your personal life, I suggest you rent an office. Because I live here, too!"

He stared down at her, the amused expression still on his face. She wasn't amused.

He nodded at her. "Point taken, Chloe…may I call you Chloe?"

Her lips thinned. "Sure. If I can call you Sherlock. And if you'll keep the noise down."

The smile disappeared from his face. "Consider it done, Chloe."

She turned around and started to make her way upstairs, because it looked like he was going to shut his door. "Chloe?"

"Yeah?" She turned to face him, and she saw him come out into the hallway.

"I told John-Dr. Watson, that is-to get the Beaujolais Niveau for you. The Georges Duboeuf. Since he was so keen to make up for your…inconvenience."

Chloe was intrigued. "Well," she said, "tell him I said thanks. And thanks…for…knowing, I guess." She smiled. "See you later."

"I'm sure." And quickly he darted back into his apartment and she heard the door snap closed again.

* * *

Chloe sometimes worried about her father. He did everything to extremes-traveling, not traveling; dating women, not dating women; drinking and eating good foods, not drinking and eating good foods. It was the sort of thing that had led her mother to divorce him, and the main reason why Chloe lived her life so rigidly. She was afraid that she had somehow inherited her father's penchant for excess. And why she considered herself to be borderline OCD. Her three younger sisters had all sailed through life without all of these tendencies. Though Kristen was prone to anxiety, the type of anxiety that could be dealt with through yoga and a good boyfriend who could help you put things in perspective.

Chloe had no boyfriend, and work kept her on the periphery of her friends' lives So there was really no one to listen, not all the time. Of course she could sometimes call her other two sisters back home in the States, but they had their own lives and families and concerns. And sometimes the time difference was a killer, too.

Her father had begged her to come to London; he had moved back to his native England after Kristen had finished high school. Chloe had just finished her thesis for grad school and had done reasonably well, the only one of her sisters to study any type of literature like her father and mother did. Chloe didn't really want to teach, and so she took the job offer and never looked back. She found that she loved England and the access to so much literary history. She used her weekends and learned how to navigate the railroad system to her advantage, to see all of the stomping grounds of her favorites, of the Brontës and of Dickens and Jane Austen and the pre-Raphaelites' homes, and where Wordsworth and Coleridge first began to experiment with their poetry. To be able to attend lectures-she still remembered the three she had attended of A.S. Byatt's to be her favorites-and to just to even take some time during the week and visit the Tower or someplace and do her editing work later in the day was a relief.

Ralph Gaynor had milked all of his resources and had landed her a freelance editing job at some publishing house, and so Chloe spent some of her time editing scrappily written romances with the strangest uses of simile and metaphor and the transformation of a word like "spew" into a reflexive verb. But it paid the bills. And of course editing her father's works paid the bills.

The two extremes of the way Chloe lived her life-her rigidity when she was home and then her fly-by-night trips away-didn't help her in the relationship department, either. Here she was, pushing thirty, still working for her father, with nothing but a dog and a swank little flat in a nice part of London to show for it. Her mother would have liked to see her married by now, but then at the same time, her mother understood the risks that came with getting married too young or marrying someone simply because you wanted to get married. So Chloe didn't worry about it. In her own way she was happy, she supposed, and she wasn't going to settle just for any guy simply because her "clock" was supposedly ticking.

Still, she found that after speaking with him, Sherlock Holmes was a little more attentive to the amount of noise that came from his flat on the days when she was home and she was working. And the wine…oh, the wine was _fabulous_. She sent him a quick thank-you email through his website, because she didn't want to send a written thank-you note. Somehow, that just seemed to be hinting that she wanted something out of one of the men downstairs that she didn't want at all.

Today, just to get out of the house, she decided to go to the coffee shop down the street and order green tea or a chai tea latte or a mocha and work.

That was how she and John hit it off.

She had been coming downstairs and he had been coming upstairs, and he had smiled and said hello to her. He looked as though he had just gotten off of work. And he looked so tired and worn-down that she couldn't just let him go in…because it looked like Sherlock wasn't home (and John confirmed it when he opened the door).

"Look," she said, "I owe you for the wine. I'm off to get some coffee, maybe some dinner. Why don't you come with?"

He seemed taken aback at this. "Dinner?" he said. And then he smiled. "Dinner would be quite nice."

It was nice. Neither one of them wanted to eat alone.

He told her about his time in Afghanistan, and she listened eagerly, not opening her laptop once.

"So where was your wound?" she asked him as she sipped at her chai tea latte.

He stirred the spoon around in his Earl Grey tea. "In the shoulder. It hurt like hell."

"I'm sure it did." She felt sorry for him, because a lot of times there was more to these injuries, wounds that were deep within and unseen and took a long time to heal or never healed at all. "How was it coming back?"

"It was difficult," he admitted. "It still is, sometimes. But working with Sherlock helps. And I have a job at a clinic now."

"You're a nurse?"

"A doctor." He broke off a bit of scone. "So what do you do, other than tell Sherlock he's being too loud when you're trying to work? And getting upset at the general chaos his profession brings into your life?"

She laughed. "I'm a lot of things. Well, half the time I'm an editor for a publishing house. Danvers and Clausen."

"And the other half of the time?"

"The other half of the time I work for my father."

"Ralph Gaynor."

"Who…"

"Sherlock told me."

"Of course," Chloe laughed, "because he has be the first to tell everyone everything."

"I've come to that conclusion, too. So what do you do for your father?"

"Everything that a secretary does, I guess. Type up his manuscripts into the computer, make sense of his notes, edit his work, go with him when he needs to travel someplace to do research, and make sure he has his digital mini-recorder with him so I know what he wants to put in his books." She sighed. "And other things."

"Other things?"

"He has bipolar disorder, and sometimes his agents tend to coddle him, whereas I don't. If he doesn't take his medications, he isn't…right. He's very smart, but he has to take the meds to stay focused and balanced. And I can tell when he's not focused and balanced. So that's where I come in."

"So you swoop in and save the day," John said softly.

"Yes, I swoop in and save the day and take him to the hospital if he needs to go. My sisters are back in the States-they understand it, but they don't. It gets hard, sometimes." She leaned forward. "Does it ever get hard for you, being back in England after fighting in Afghanistan?"

"Sometimes," he said. "But not so much now, working with Sherlock and all. It gets easier. It helps get my mind off of things. It was very difficult at first, but now …"

"You seem like you're adjusting better. But those things take time." She reached for her laptop and opened it. "Do you mind? I need to check my email. At least if I can open and reply to some emails, I can comfort myself that I got _something_ done."

"I don't mind at all." He watched as she went through each of the emails, her artificial nails clicking efficiently on the computer keys. She smiled at some of the more personal ones, and turned her laptop around to show John the picture of her nephew in the baby bath, his eyes wide and bright as he chewed on his rubber ducky.

And then he saw her face cloud and her eyebrows screw together as her lips thinned.

"What is it?" he asked her.

She almost slammed the laptop lid shut. "I think I just jinxed myself."

He stared at her like she was out of her mind, but he remained patient as she pursed her lips and shook her head.

"It's my dad. He just fired another agent."

* * *

She wasn't sure what her father wanted-he had two master's degrees, one in British literature and the other in history, and then a Ph.D. in British history, so he was a sort of Jack-of-all-trades in the academic world. He wasn't sure if he wanted to be a David Starkey or Simon Schama or Ken Follett or Bernard Cornwell. He just liked to research, to explore, and then to write about it, publishing copious volumes of biography and history and fiction. She nervously chattered on about this as they tried to get the server's attention and as John hurriedly drank the last of his coffee.

John offered to pay for the coffee. Chloe took out her debit card and handed it to the server before he did, and he felt a little sheepish. It wasn't a date, but he still should pay for the coffee.

"But you bought me the wine," she said as she hailed a taxi.

"Actually, Sherlock bought you the wine."

A crooked smile. "Did he, now?" she said with a hint of mirth in her voice.

"Why don't I come with you?" he volunteered, and she exhaled audibly and rubbed at her temple with her forefinger and middle finger. "I'm a doctor, after all," he reminded her.

She tossed her head. "We're not going to my dad's."

"Where are we going, then?" he asked her as he climbed into the taxi beside her. She quickly gave an address and leaned back into the seat as the driver pulled out into traffic. "The hospital. Chloe…"

She stared out the window, blinking back her tears, and then she turned to him.

"My dad is in the hospital. Again. And his agent-his _former_ agent-won't tell me why, which is probably why Dad fired him."


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor is mine.**

**Wow…I'm so surprised at how many people have subscribed to, favorited, or reviewed this. Thanks so much! I always appreciate feedback, positive or otherwise.**

**Treadmill**

**Part Two**

_Got a notion that says it doesn't feel right_

_Got an answer to your sotory today_

_You gave me a sign that didn't feel right_

_So don't knock it, don't knock it, you been here before._

-from the song "Notion," by Kings of Leon

He met her as Mrs. Hudson was showing him the flat.

She must have been coming back from some kind of exercise lesson, because she wore yoga pants and sneakers under her wool coat. Her brown hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and she held it back with an elastic headband to boot.

She wasn't pretty, but well, _funny_-looking.

"Chloe."

She had been ready to dart up the stairs when Mrs. Hudson called her name, and she took the few steps toward the door of the flat. There was dog hair on her gym bag, the kind of long dog hair associated with a Maltese or a spaniel.

"Chloe, this is Mr. Sherlock Holmes. He's going to be renting this flat…so now we're full. Isn't that wonderful, dear?" Mrs. Hudson asked as she smoothed down Chloe's hair.

Chloe gracefully sidestepped her way out of Mrs. Hudson's ministrations. She appraised Sherlock with a pair of almond-shaped blue eyes, then smiled a sincere smile, the kind that rounded out her cheeks and made her actually look warm and friendly.

"That's wonderful," she said.

American. An expatriate. So had she read about the wonderful lives of Dorothy Parker and Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Sylvia Plath and decided that the expatriate life would be for her?

"It's nice to meet you." She held out her hand, small, with almost short, stubby fingers that ended in artificial nails, not too long, filed into an oval shape and painted with a sheer, pearly color, though there was some chipping at the tips that you could only see if you looked closely.

"Likewise," he said shortly. She cocked her head in an almost birdlike manner and smiled crookedly.

"I need to put my dog out," she said, and under her half-zipped hoodie he could see what looked like a leotard or something. She let go of his hand and hurried upstairs to her flat, and minutes later she descended the stairs again with a Cavalier King Charles spaniel on a leash-a light pink leash with lavender edging.

Ballet. She took ballet classes.

And the chipping? She worked at a computer, and painted her nails with sheer polish so the chipping wouldn't be so obvious.

So she wasn't a dancer. She just danced on the side. For exercise.

And when he saw the large manila envelope Mrs. Hudson carried upstairs and put outside Chloe's door, with the return addressee as "R. Gaynor," he knew.

* * *

She was a quiet neighbor…almost too quiet.

She liked Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven. She also played Kings of Leon and Fall Out Boy and Coldplay when she wasn't working. And she had a very juvenile love of Taylor Swift. She loved the Beatles, particularly the "White Album."

She ordered too much take-away. A lot of Mediterranean, Italian, Greek, and Thai. And a lot from the restaurant downstairs.

She loved to read, books of substance. She had come back yesterday from the used bookshop with three volumes: _The Handmaid's Tale, Moll Flanders, _and _The Roosevelt Women_.

And when she would go out of town on business. That stupid dog…Mrs. Hudson loved that stupid dog. Mrs. Hudson watched the dog-Lilly-who loved nothing more than to chase after thrown tennis balls and put her paw on his foot to be petted as Mrs. Hudson would show someone in.

"Whatever you're doing when she's here, stop it," Mrs. Hudson told him. "She works out of her home. She's a good tenant…"

"You're saying I'm not?" he said as he turned his attention to one of his experiments.

"Sherlock, dear," Mrs. Hudson admonished him, "she was here first."

"She'll grow accustomed to it," he mumbled.

There was a man. Nathan, his name was. In the middle of the night when Nathan was at Chloe's, he could hear the creaking noises from upstairs, the steady beat of something he had really no desire to think about right now.

Three weeks in, Nathan was gone.

Sherlock didn't ask Chloe what happened to Nathan.

John did.

Nathan had wanted her to move in with him and stop traveling so much.

She had told him to go fuck himself and let him collect his things. Sherlock remembered the slam of a door at three in the morning and rapidly descending steps on the staircase.

Sherlock later found out that brother Mycroft had approached Chloe about "spying" on him, too.

Chloe had brushed him off. And then called her father.

Mycroft had not been happy to receive an expletive-filled voicemail from Ralph Gaynor, who had been out at a party and had been drunk. "If you fucking approach my daughter again, you'll be dealing with my bloody lawyer. Do you understand that, asshole?"

Gaynor called him the next day with the same message, only he delivered it more politely.

But Mycroft had understood it quite well the first time.

* * *

"She looked like she was upset to see the police here," John remarked as they heard the upstairs door slam.

"That's not important right now," Sherlock replied.

"It's important if we have to live with her," John countered.

Sherlock paused in front of the doorway, his hand poised on the doorknob. "Wine. She likes wine-Beaujolais Niveau. Make sure it's Georges Leboeuf." He reached into his pocket and held out a fifty-pound note. "Here. You buy it. I have urgent business...the _case_, remember…"

A few weeks later, she came down to ask him to be quiet.

And she thanked him for the wine.

* * *

John watched as Chloe approached the nurses' station. The nurse glanced up from her work, surveying Chloe and reaching across the counter for a clipboard.

"Ralph Gaynor. Room 247."

"May I ask why…?" Chloe began.

"That's confidential," the nurse snipped out.

Chloe jutted out a hip and placed a hand on it. "I'm his daughter. Chloe Gaynor. Look. 'Emergency contact-Chloe Gaynor, daughter.' That's me."

She leaned against the counter on her tiptoes, peering over it to the nurse's computer, almost pointing at the screen in earnest.

"How come you weren't contacted, then?" the nurse said edgily.

"Because my dad's former agent is a colossal idiot."

"Chloe!" John intoned.

She addressed him. "Well, he is. Ask my dad."

The nurse sighed and let them through, smiling at John as though he were some sort of long-suffering boyfriend.

Ralph Gaynor wasn't as personable in private as he was in public. He was seated on the hospital bed, glowering at the IV needle in his arm and the loud talk show blaring away on the television in front of him. When Chloe and John entered the room, he glanced up. "Clo," he acknowledged, relief on his face. "About time you got here. I told Al to call you…And who's this?" His eyes brightened when he saw John, but Chloe sat down on the edge of the bed and cut him off.

"This is John. He's just a friend."

Ralph's hazel eyes dimmed. "Oh, just a friend. I see. So why didn't Al call you?"

"Because he's a motherfucking dumbass," Chloe answered glibly. "Isn't he, John?"

John didn't know what to say, so he shrugged and said, "I would think so, if he didn't call you."

Ralph Gaynor turned his bespectacled face to Chloe. "You see, Clo? This is why I want you to take over as agent. You know what's what, you know who to talk to. Say yes, Clo."

"No."

"Chloe, I'd pay you a thousand times more than Danvers and Clausen does. You can move out of that little rathole and come stay at the house in Cornwall." He reached for Chloe's hand. "C'mon, Clo, what do you say?"

"No." Chloe shook her head, a smile forming on her face. "We've been over this a thousand times. I like my little rathole, I like my ho-hum job, I like London." She let go of his hand. "So why did you come in?"

Gaynor ran his hand through thinning grayish-brown hair. "I thought it was my heart."

"And was it?" John chimed in curiously.

Gaynor turned his attention to him. "No," he said, his face taking on a sheepish expression. "They said that it was acid reflux."

Chloe looked relieved. "That's easy to treat, isn't it, John?" she queried.

He took a seat in the chair beside the bed. "Of course it is," he answered. "Just some medicine, a change in diet…"

"A change in diet," Chloe repeated.

"Come off it, Clo," Ralph said petulantly. "I don't need you to be my nanny."

"A few minutes ago you were begging me to be your agent."

"But you're good with people, Clo."

"No, I'm not, Dad. But I'll call Danvers and Clausen for you and see who they recommend," she promised.

Ralph Gaynor turned his attention to John once more. "So what do you do, John?" he said, and John found the situation to be ridiculous. Ralph Gaynor in hospital-issue pajamas, trying to question him like the overprotective father.

"I'm a doctor," John answered. "I just got back from Afghanistan, actually."

"Oh, a _doctor_," Ralph said reflectively. "And military service. Why didn't you introduce your friend to me earlier, Clo?"

"_Because_, Dad, you were working on your book," Chloe reminded Ralph. "You have a deadline."

And then came the beep from his phone. John checked it. A text from Sherlock.

"Excuse me," he said, stepping out in the hallway as Chloe continued to converse with Ralph.

"What happened to Nathan, Clo?"

"It didn't work."

"Why not, Chloe? I'm your father, and you don't need to hide anything from me."

"We just wanted different things."

"You don't need to take care of me, Clo."

"Well, you're sure as hell doing a bang-up job of taking care of yourself, aren't you?"

_Where are you?_ Sherlock's text demanded.

_At the hospital._

_What happened to you?_

_Not me, Chloe._

_Really?_ A beat. And then, _Her father?_

_Her father._

Chloe emerged a few minutes later, with a pale face as she bit her lips.

"Well?" John asked her.

She shifted uneasily, shoving her hands into the pockets of her charcoal wool peacoat. "They're keeping him overnight as a precaution, just to run more tests."

"You'll need help getting him tomorrow?" he offered.

She stiffened. "_No._ I can do it myself." She swept past him, and he followed her outside. She hailed another taxi and gave the driver the address to Baker Street. She was silent as she stared out the window and chewed absently on her nails. After awhile, she turned to him, and she looked so tired. "I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have snapped at you. My dad…It's too much sometimes."

"Do your sisters know?" John asked her.

"My sisters know, but they don't have the time I do. They have families and jobs, and Kristen has school. It's not fair to ask them to fly over here to help take care of him."

"It's not fair to you, either, to do it on your own."

She considered this, chewing on her lower lip, and then she pushed her hair out of her face. "But I have to step up, because I'm the only one who's here. Because I'm the one who chose to pick up the slack."

They got out of the taxi and she paid the cabbie out of her own purse-again.

"Let us know if you need help, Chloe," John said to her as she was poised to ascend the stairs to her own flat. "Even Sherlock…when he's not on a case. It'll get him out."

She smiled down at him. "Thanks," she said. "I'll keep that in mind."

* * *

"She's a nail-biter," Sherlock said as he watched out the window as she left the next day.

John rolled his eyes as he continued to document the _Study in Pink _case.

"Her nails. She bites at her cuticles sometimes, but she can't bite her fake nails, though she'll chew on them. Nervous habit, maybe."

John watched Sherlock as he turned away from the window and dramatically crossed the room, reaching for the violin. "Do you fancy her?" John asked him.

Sherlock scoffed, then barked out a laugh. "No," he replied. "But it's always interesting to watch her comings and goings. And Ralph Gaynor is interesting to…observe when he pops by for lamb or veal and red wine from downstairs. He thinks she's this marvelous cook. She really orders from Speedy's, plates it up, and then hides the boxes in the rubbish bins outside. Mrs. Hudson says she can make a dip out of chipped beef, scallions, and mayonnaise, though. And guacamole. She can make guacamole."

"Do you want to have her cook some night?" John mumbled sarcastically.

"Not a chance. She'd make a mess of the kitchen," Sherlock drawled after some thought, scraping the bow across the violin. "Do _you_ fancy her?"

"Ralph Gaynor seems to think so."

"Ralph Gaynor isn't thinking clearly. He never does."

"Oh?" John said, turning to him. "Have you talked to him?"

"More than once."

"So who does the thinking for him, then?" John challenged.

A bar of _The Barber of Seville_. "That's what Chloe does," Sherlock said before he stood up and began to scrape out another tune.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor is mine.**

**Thanks so much for reviews. I always appreciate feedback, positive or otherwise. **

**Treadmill**

**Part Three**

_If you want to play it like a game, _

_Well, come on, come on, let's play,_

_Cause I'd rather waste my life pretending_

_Than have to forget you for one whole minute_

from the song "Crushcrushcrush" by Paramore

She called the publishing house just as she promised Ralph she would. She emailed the second of her sisters to let them know what was going on with their father. She knew that Megan might not be able to answer right away because of the time difference, but it still felt good to get it out. Megan would have something wise to say. Megan always had something wise to say. And then Megan would email Ralph and tell him to straighten up, at which point Ralph would call Brenda, the third sister, at which point Kristen would become involved because Brenda would call Kristen crying, at which point Megan and Chloe would email or call Ralph respectively and tell him to stop being manipulative.

"Your blog," Chloe remarked to Sherlock one evening as she came up with a carry-out box of grilled chicken salad from the restaurant below. "I liked it."

"You should tell John," he advised her brusquely. "He wrote it, after all." He frowned and opened his mailbox to retrieve the endless amount of letters and bills that had accumulated there over the past few days.

"I know it's not _your_ blog," she went on. "But your job…You make a living out of what you love to do. That's a big thing. And helping people…that's a big thing, too."

"You're not asking me to mind your dog, are you?" he asked her as he tore an envelope open.

She was taken aback. She glared at him. "I'm not asking you to do _anything_," she flared. She turned on her heel and stomped upstairs and slammed the door to her flat shut.

She contented herself with dinner and work. She put him out of her mind, she wouldn't think about him. How could someone be so cynical like that, when she was really trying to be friendly, when she was trying to start a conversation with someone about what he did for a living?

Asshole.

Asshole. Asshole. Asshole.

She put on her pajamas and then her anorak over her pajamas to take Lilly out again.

It was cold, even with her anorak on. "Hurry up, Lil," she mumbled as the dog sniffed around the back garden for a place to go. Lilly whined, sniffing some more, stretching toward the fence.

And began to bark.

Chloe tried to hush her, but it was no use. It wasn't the kind of bark that came out of Lilly when she saw another dog or a cat, but a true, stay-off-my-property-and-away-from-my-owner bark.

Chloe reached for the can of mace in her anorak pocket. She hated it when Lilly barked like this, because it set her on edge. She felt her stomach tense and her heart began to beat quickly.

She gave a small tug back on the leash. "Hurry up, Lil," she said harshly.

Lilly hurried up and did her business, her eyes never leaving the street corner. Chloe decided that she would get the poop in the morning.

Chloe led the dog toward the door, but Lilly stopped and began to bark, and then to snarl.

And then to growl.

Chloe didn't even want to wait to see what was there, and she didn't even want to investigate. She haphazardly scooped the dog up in her arms and hurried inside, locking and bolting the back door behind her. She set Lilly down.

She went to the front of the house and peered out the window.

There was someone there, across the way, watching the house.

She panicked.

She picked up Lilly again, the leash trailing behind her. She thought about calling the police, but if it was someone who was there to see Sherlock or some elaborate joke, she didn't want to look like an asshole or deal with that smug Sally Donovan the next time Inspector Lestrade came around with some of his underlings.

She banged on the door of Holmes's flat.

He didn't seem too amused to see her there when he opened the door.

"There's someone watching the house," she stammered.

He drummed his fingers on the doorframe, deliberated for a moment, and then stood aside so she could enter the flat.

"So that's why your dog was barking?" he asked her as she surveyed the mess in the flat. He took his book off of the chair so that she could sit down, and then he went to the front window to peer out.

"Why else?" she retorted. He frowned and turned to face her.

"He's not watching you," he told her triumphantly.

"Oh, like that makes me feel any better," she mumbled. Lilly was sniffing at something that she shouldn't really be sniffing at, and Chloe tugged at the leash and picked her up, pulling the dog into her lap.

"You're going to leave dog hair all over that chair," he said to her bluntly. He went to the window again and laughed. "Still there. If he were after you, the dog would have scared him."

"How do you know _that_?" Chloe demanded.

"Most amateurs are scared by dogs. If he were after you, he would have run. Not that your dog is vicious, but it would have caused quite an alarm and he would have been caught. No, this man is a professional, and he didn't run. He wants to be seen."

"Why would he want to be seen?" Chloe asked him.

"Why do you _think_ he'd want to be seen, Chloe?" Sherlock riposted. "You're no fool. You can do better than that. Come on. Give it a try."

"You're being silly," she said.

"When it comes to something like this, Chloe, I'm never being silly or joking. Come on. Come _here_. Leave the dog."

She sighed in capitulation and stood up, crossing the room and going to the window beside him. He pulled aside the curtain. "Now look. What do you see?"

"I see a man."

"Of course you see a man. Try harder."

She leaned closer to the window. "He's near the lamp. He's not scared to be seen. He's standing straight and not slouching or hunching down. He wants us to see him. He wants us to know he's not afraid and that _we_ should be afraid." She turned to him. "Why?"

"Not _we,_ Chloe. _Me_." He pulled the curtain shut with a snap of his wrist.

"Why would he want you to be afraid?" she persisted.

"Does anyone ever tell you that you ask too many questions?" he said to her.

She smiled crookedly. "I'm naturally curious. I'm supposed to ask questions. What does this mean? What's the subtext? What does the word _do?"_

"Subtext," he muttered, going to the laptop on the desk and sitting down. "Subtext, subtext. What's your email, Chloe?"

"Why do you want to know?" she said.

"I need you to do something for me," he replied.. "Chloe. The email."

"What do you want me to do?" she asked him.

"The email, and then I'll explain."

_What does the word do?_

A close reading?

Sherlock Holmes wanted a close reading…of what?

_How does the word work in the sentence? Denotation? Connotation? _

_Not the meaning…_

She gave him her G-mail account. He clicked through to another email, cut and pasted something from that window, and then put it into the new window. He sent it.

She watched him as he closed the laptop and then turned to her. "Come on."

"Where are we going?" Chloe groaned inwardly as Lilly leapt off of the chair and went to him.

"To your flat." He fished his key out from his pants pocket and opened the door to his flat. "After you."

"You can't just invite yourself into my flat," she told him crossly. "I want to go to bed. I'm tired."

"It's not that late. On a Friday night." He turned out the lights of his own flat. "Where's your sense of impulsivity, of living in the moment?"

"It disappeared when I graduated from college."

"Your life must be terribly boring," he commented dryly. "I can't abide boredom."

"I like my life that way. Dull and boring," she responded.

"You're lying." He took a few steps toward her, his mouth quirking into a half-smile. "You like jaunting off to God-knows-where with your father, following him on this and that lead. You live for the feel of the worn pages of dusty books in your fingers. You love being the only one in the library or the archives, looking for that something that no one else has yet discovered, that indescribable thing that could shatter the myth of everything we might know about something or someone. Do you really want to spend the weekend editing some shitty romance novel and getting it in well ahead of its deadline time only for the diva who authored it to call screaming at you that you butchered it, when you could be doing what you really _love_ to do?"

Later, Chloe would say that she had been snookered into it.

Because he smelled so good.

* * *

It was addictive. He was on a high and she was on it, too.

She opened up some wine and got into her email.

It was an email to Sherlock from a supposed fan.

She read it two or three times. The quotes were familiar.

_Oft times nothing profits more than self-esteem, grounded on just and right, well-managed. _

_My sentence is for open war; of wiles more unexpert I boast not: then let those contrive who need, or when they need, not now. _

_Ease would recant, vows made in pain, as violent and void. _

_Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell from heaven; for even in heaven his looks and thoughts were always downward bent, admiring more the riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, than ought divine or holy else enjoyed in vision beatific. _

_This is servitude, to serve the unwise. _

_And out of good still to find means of evil. _

It was so familiar. She'd had to take a seminar on it for the honors program for her undergrad.

Milton. _Paradise Lost_.

"So your fan is a plagiarist?" she said ironically, the Riesling dulling her inhibitions and making her a little more mocking.

"It would appear so." He was surveying her apartment. He examined the titles of her bookshelf, pulling out her Sookie Stackhouse books. "You read this?"

"I read a lot," she said defensively.

"You could have gone for your Ph.D., but you chose to come to London," he murmured, pausing in front of a framed picture of herself and her sisters on her graduation day. "Being the good little girl, as always? The one who isn't selfish?'

"What would you know about not being selfish?" she asked him. "You're using me for your own selfish purposes right now, because you get your kicks out of using your mind to unravel seemingly unsolvable crimes. This whole thing-this is a kick."

"It's not a kick." He opened the door to her bedroom to reveal the sleigh bed in there. "It's a puzzle."

"Get out of there!" she ordered him. "You don't have any business in there."

He closed the door, backing away from it.

"It's Milton."

"I know it's Milton," he said petulantly, sitting down on her beige microfiber suede couch, folding his arms and slouching into the cushion and staring at her irritably.

"But what does it say?"

"I want to go to the library tomorrow. Check some sources."

"Don't you have your sources _there_?" he demanded, gesturing to her laptop and then at the PC in the corner.

"I think I know what it could be," she said, "but I want to check the _OED_ and some stuff on Blake's poem about Milton."

"William Blake? _Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night_?"

"That William Blake."

He ran his hand across his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut, and he jumped up, startled, when Lilly dropped a tennis ball at his feet and sat beside him expectantly, her dark brown eyes not leaving his. Chloe stifled a laugh.

"She wants to play," Chloe explained.

"I can see that," he said, picking up the slightly sodden tennis ball.

"She's bored," Chloe teased, "and she knows you're bored, too, so she thought you could work together to solve the problem."

"She wants to play ball."

"Win!" Chloe turned around, laughing at him.

Furrowing his brow, he threw the ball, only for Lilly to go scampering after it. Lilly returned to his feet, dropping the ball and staring up at him, wanting him to pick it up and throw it again.

He did this a few more times, and Chloe kept laughing at him. She got the feeling that he didn't care for being laughed at, but he'd had so many laughs at her expense that she felt it was justified.

She sent the page to print, and she picked the warm paper off of the printer and stuffed it into her laptop bag.

"You're taking that with you tomorrow?" he asked her.

"In case I need to write on it," she said. "I can get change for the copier if needed tomorrow."

"What would you need to copy?" he said curiously.

"Old books. Criticism. Journals. It'll be a long day tomorrow."

"Then I'm set for it," he declared, putting down the ball and eying her as she sat down in the chair that matched her couch. "We can leave first thing…"

"You're not coming," she interrupted.

"I'm not?" he echoed incredulously.

"No. You're not."

He slumped back in the chair, his icy blue eyes not leaving hers. "Do you need an incentive?"

"No, thanks."

"You do." He had an accusing look on his face. "You want me to pay you."

"_No!"_ she repeated. "The only way you can pay me is for you to let me do this my way. Your thing is…whatever it is you do. My thing is the library. Research. Papers. Close readings."

He inclined his head. "You're going to the Bodleian at Oxford."

She set down her wineglass with a thump. "Do you want me to help you with this or what?" she said curtly.

In the end, he let her go on her own.

By the time she would return, she would be frightened out of her wits.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor is mine.**

**Author's Note: Again, I am still so surprised by how well this has been received! I'm working on a one-shot that will explain a very important event in Chloe's life and kind of why she is the way she is and why she chose to move to London. It's called "Little Runaway Girl" and should be up by Monday. As always, please leave reviews-I like to know how I'm doing. Thanks!**

**Also, a few questions: Should Chloe already know Sherlock is a high-functioning sociopath, or should she find out in the next few chapters? Should Moriarty also target Chloe (if he does, I have a really good idea about how)? And should Chloe and Sherlock hook up before or after the whole bomb in the pool incident? Either way, a hookup and the fallout would be quite messy. Full of angst and confusion, because as you'll learn in this chapter and as you already know, Chloe is just a little messed up.**

**Treadmill**

**Part Four**

_Whirlwind mornings turn_

_Into days _

_Then into worried nights._

_But it's all right_

_-_from the song "Sunshower" by Chris Cornell

Chloe's flat was neat, almost too neat. It was completely different from the one he and John shared. The curtains were new, the paint-a dark beige-fresh, and all of the furniture was hers. Well, it wasn't _spotless_, but it was much cleaner than his. No, the dog liked to sit on the furniture-so not really much cleaner at all.

Her netbook lay on the kitchen table, silver and shining with a sort of smug newness. The PC in the corner was on sleep mode-IBM, he noticed-and he could see two or three flash drives, all with bright, girly colors-purple, peacock blue, fuschia. On a computer desk of dark wood. And a printer on the desk and on the shelf above, Webster's dictionary and thesaurus and a few grammar books. The most recent MLA guide for her American projects, because there would always be American projects for an American editor.

She didn't seem to care that he was nosing around her apartment. He scanned her bookshelves, noted her IPod on its dock on the bottom shelf, the five-pound hand-weights and stability ball and rolled-up yoga mat shoved in one corner. The DVDs. The books. The pictures, of mostly Chloe and her sisters. Some of Chloe and her mother, some of Chloe and Ralph. Chloe with a three-month-old baby, a nephew, maybe? A friend's child? Chloe and friends from America, a sorority formal from her college days when she was roughly ten years younger and a little more naïve, maybe.

The kitchen. Clean. The dog's food and water bowls placed against a wall so no one would trip. The table a round, glass-top thing, with a black wrought iron base. Four chairs with red-and-black cushions. Dishes and silverware on the draining board. Just a mug of what he assumed must have been tea in the sink.

She offered him some wine. He refused, then wandered to the bedroom. The door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open.

A sleigh bed, full-sized, with two dressers of dark wood to match the headboard and footboard. An ocean-blue quilt and pillows and sheets-cream edged with a lace design. _The Infinite Plan_ by Isabel Allende on the bedside table. The closet was open, too, and there were dresses and business suits and shoes and blouses all pressed crisply, hanging up in it. A dog bed for Lilly, though he could see that the dog slept in Chloe's bed.

The dresser top. Four perfume bottles. A bottle of Ibuprofen. A sleek compact case-birth control pills-an inhaler and OTC allergy medicine, and then the prescription bottle.

Bupropion SR, 300 mg. _Take one by mouth every morning._

Then she snapped at him to close the door, because he'd had no business in there.

But he was satisfied.

He was always satisfied when everything clicked into place.

* * *

It was very easy to find the article out of the _Minneapolis Star Tribune_. Google Minneapolis, Chloe Gaynor.

It had been in 1997. Chloe Gaynor, sixteen years old and lost like some leaf in the bitter autumn winds of the Minnesota plains, ran away. Stole her mother's credit card, emptied her own bank account (just from babysitting and tutoring money and a weekend job as a restaurant hostess), and boarded a Greyhound Bus to New York City.

People had thought she had been kidnapped, that she had run off with some promise of an Internet boyfriend, all sorts of things. But they found her in New York, holed up in some cheap motel, sobbing and in the act of slitting her wrists. She'd taken a bottle of aspirins and had been rushed to the hospital to have her stomach pumped.

She'd been hospitalized that summer. She'd emerged to continue limping along in high school, and then had gone off to college and blossomed.

So this was why Chloe was in London. There were too many memories, there were too many reminders. London, an ocean away, was a new start for her.

Because Chloe had been running away from herself for a long time.

* * *

She walked Lilly like always, a little later than normal, then showered and blew out her hair and dressed.

Maybe he should come, she thought. She went downstairs and knocked on the door and she didn't hear anyone answer, but she could hear the sounds of a violin playing and she knew he was home.

She twisted the knob and found that it was open, and the room was dark. He was slumped on the couch, playing his violin, producing bars of music which she recognized, and then all of a sudden scraping the bow across the strings to produce a cacophonic scratching sound. She put down her purse and her laptop bag and went to the window to open the curtains as he watched her.

"The door was open?" he asked her.

"The door was open," she said. He rubbed his eyes at the sudden light that came in and furrowed his brow. "You're still in your pajamas," she remarked.

"John needs to lock the door when he leaves," Sherlock mumbled. "Aren't you going to the library anyway? Oxford?"

"I don't want to go to Oxford unless I have to," she answered. She shifted uneasily as he stared at her intently. "So I'm going to go to the library at the university in town. You mentioned wanting to come last night, and I really thought about it and decided maybe you should come after all."

"Did John mention this to you?" Sherlock asked her, cocking his brow and surveying her cynically.

"I haven't spoken to John," she answered. "Why? Where did he go?"

Sherlock yawned and put the violin aside. "He's with his girlfriend. They're going out for coffee and then shopping." He made a face at the word _shopping_. "I was invited, but it promised to be a very dull day. So I let them go and decided to stay here."

Chloe sat down in one of the chairs and knitted her brows. "So you're going to stay holed up here all day?"

"That's the plan as of now." He reached for the newspaper and opened it, scanning the pages intently. "It promises to be a very boring day with nothing to do. My mind rebels at stagnation, Chloe."

"Then come to the library with me," she proposed brightly. "We can make a day of it. It'll be fun. After the library, maybe we can get lunch or dinner or something, and maybe there are some places we can see. There's a Dutch masters exhibit at the Tate Gallery, Vermeer and Rembrandt and …Sherlock? Sherlock, are you listening to me?"

"Boring," he muttered.

She crossed her arms under her breasts. "You're being ridiculous," she admonished.

"Stubbornness isn't one of your more redeeming qualities, is it, Chloe?" he asked her, closing the paper abruptly and glaring across at her.

"I wasn't asking you on a date," she said angrily.

"Of course you weren't." He leaned his head back against the back of the sofa and brought his hand over his eyes to shield them from the piercing winter sunlight.

"If you can at least let Lilly out. Mrs. Hudson has the key," Chloe said maliciously before getting up to leave. "And here's my cell number if you decide to change your mind." She took a pen out of her purse and jotted the number down on a stray piece of paper from the table beside her. She got up and placed it on the desk beside his laptop. "Call me if you do."

She picked up her purse and her laptop case and went to the door. Her hand was on the knob.

"Chloe."

She turned to him, her face inquisitive.

"I don't ring. I text."

She stood there for a moment, unsure of what to think or say. And then she glared at him and opened the door, getting quite a satisfaction out of the noise it made when she slammed it behind her.

* * *

She spent the morning and most of the afternoon in the library, her IPod earbud in one ear while she checked the library's online edition of the unabridged _Oxford English Dictionary _and jotted down appropriate notes in her Microsoft Word window.

She checked some of the articles in the journal database, but she found nothing of importance, though she did get sidetracked on an interesting article about the Brontës and how Emily might have stolen much of the storyline of _Wuthering Heights_ from Branwell. "Branwell-imagine!" she exclaimed to herself, and she did save it in a PDF file because maybe her father or John would be interested in it. Or even Sherlock.

No, she thought, he wouldn't be.

"Dull," he would say. "Boring. My mind is stagnating, Chloe."

Well, then, she wouldn't show it to him.

Her phone vibrated and she took it out of her purse to see who might have called.

It was a text. From Sherlock of all people.

_One word: Ololon._

She didn't understand. But the name was familiar.

She checked out a copy of Blake's poems-a thick volume, but easy to slip into her laptop bag-and of courseshe emailed Ralph to bring her his copy of _Paradise Lost_. The Blake books with both poems and illustrations were too much for her to carry. She left the library at two o'clock with a great inner sense of accomplishment and was ready to head home and come up with something, maybe write some kind of paper or something like she did in school and knock on his door and present it to him with a lofty, "Good night, Mr. Holmes!"

She stopped for some coffee and a sandwich at one of the local cafes and left about fifteen minutes later. She debated catching a taxi, but it was a nice, blustery day, a stereotypical London day, not like the winter days of bitter cold and high winds and mountains of ice and snow back in Minneapolis. And she hadn't worn heels, but her riding boots, so she decided to save her money and hotfoot it.

She waited for the light to turn so that she could cross at the crosswalk, and she stood aside so that the woman with the baby in the stroller could cross before she did.

The man behind her didn't make a move to cross in front of her, though.

So she continued on her way.

She stopped at the used bookshop on the way home. She nearly squealed in delight when she found _Like Water for Chocolate_ and _The Secret History_, and she bought them almost on impulse.

She frowned when she saw the man who had let her go ahead of him on the crosswalk five blocks over standing on the corner a few shops back, as though he were waiting for her to exit the shop. He was a shabbily dressed man, with faded jeans and a worn black leather jacket on, and he looked to be rather tall and muscular, with a shaved head left unprotected from the wind.

She started back on her way toward Baker Street, checking over her shoulder as she approached the corner. He was following her.

Now she was pissed.

She swore under her breath and hailed a taxi, jumping in as quickly as she could and giving her address.

She turned around to see that he stood there, trying to catch one, too, only that hers had been the last one waiting. Once her taxi turned the corner, she sighed in relief.

_Haha-lost you, asshole._

Chloe came back to Baker Street to find that Mrs. Hudson had taken over watching Lilly. "Sherlock told me you were doing errands for him, dear," Mrs. Hudson said as Chloe threw the paper coffee cup in the trash and unbuttoned her peacoat. "Which is awfully sweet of you, since he's on a case and all."

"He's not on a case," Chloe countered. "He's upstairs moping in his flat."

Mrs. Hudson furrowed her brow at this, and then shrugged. "Well, you know how it is, Chloe. He could have just been asked to do one. He doesn't always tell me, you know, or John. Now that John has that girlfriend, I think Sherlock is letting him spend time with her."

_I wouldn't bet on it. _

"Do you mind if I keep Lilly a little longer?" Mrs. Hudson went on. "She's been curled up on the couch by me while I've been watching the telly. Sweetest little dog, that one. You can never go wrong with a Cavalier King Charles spaniel, I say."

"Sure," Chloe said, hopping onto the first step. "If you want, you can walk her, too. Just let me know and I'll bring the leash down for you."

"Thank you, Chloe," Mrs. Hudson answered, returning to the living room. Chloe darted up the stairs and stopped on the landing in front of Sherlock's door. She rapped on it as loudly as she could. She was furious. One little favor, one little thing, and he was too depressed and wrapped up in himself to help her out when she was helping him out. Well, she would tell him! And she wouldn't help him on the case anymore, either-he could take this case or whatever it was and stick it.

She had her glare ready and the scolding on the tip of her tongue set when John answered the door…and a pretty dark-haired woman sitting on the sofa watching TV.

"Chloe!" John exclaimed with reluctant enthusiasm. "Imagine you popping by!"

"John." Chloe's expression changed from an angry one to a bemused one. She groaned inwardly as Sarah craned her neck to see who was at the door.

"So, Chloe, what brings you here today?" John asked her with feigned curiosity.

"I'm here to see Sherlock," Chloe said as honestly as she could. "Is he in?"

"He's in his bedroom, actually…he mentioned that he was expecting you." John stood aside so that Chloe could enter. "Sarah, this is the neighbor I told you about…Chloe. Chloe, this is Sarah."

Sarah smiled and rose. "Pleased to meet you, Chloe," she said. "John told me about you, and about meeting your dad. I didn't know you helped Ralph Gaynor with his books. I like his biographies…and the one he wrote about the War of the Roses. Did he go in with an open mind about Richard III killing his nephews?"

"Oh, of course," Chloe lied, though Ralph hadn't. He'd always regarded Richard as guilty as sin. Though for the book Chloe had suggested he postulate that Richard might not have ordered the murders per se, but may have turned a blind eye when they were being planned or found out about them later and had realized how he might benefit from his nephews being dead and never punished the culprits.

"Sorry," Chloe said as she edged her way to the closed bedroom door, "it was great meeting you, but I really need to talk to Sherlock."

"I see," Sarah said. It wasn't a snotty "I see," but a sincere "I see." With a pleasant smile.

She was really nice. John deserved someone who was nice.

Chloe opened the bedroom door and closed it. The room was still dark, and she found Sherlock laying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Still in his pajamas.

"You're ridiculous," she pronounced, sitting on the edge of the bed and removing her coat.

"Hello to you, too," he said. He turned his head to look at her. "You received my text?"

"Yeah." She stared at him a minute. "Your hair looks floppy."

"Did you find anything?" he persisted.

She opened up her laptop case and pulled out the book of Blake's poems. "The word you sent me. Ololon. It's not a word, but a character in Blake's poem 'Milton.' Ololon comes down in the shape of a skylark and then transforms into a young girl. Blake thinks she's one of his muses, but she's not. She's looking for Milton. Then Milton comes down from heaven and they go through all of these scenarios-which are like the things that happened in the Bible-and then he and Ololon are reunited and she becomes the female side of him."

"But what does it have to do with _Paradise Lost_?" Sherlock lay his arm across his forehead and continued to think, staring at the ceiling.

"Milton comes down from heaven and joins with Blake's body so he can make a spiritual journey and fix his spiritual mistakes. ..in Blake's mind, Puritainism. After he does this, he can rest in peace." Chloe shook her head. "Blake was a little out there. He thought he was an actual prophet and he and his wife would actually play Garden of Eden in their yard."

"And the quotes from _Paradise Lost_?"

"My dad is bringing over the book later. Speaking of which-" she lowered her voice-"you've got a lot of nerve telling John and Mrs. Hudson and God knows who else that I'm doing research for you because you're on a case when you're really just feeling sorry for yourself. You can't even put my dog out."

"I'm not feeling sorry for myself, Chloe," he countered, springing up to a sitting position and picking up the book. "I'm trying to figure out the meaning of the quotes in that email sent to me. Since your area of expertise is in literature, I thought you'd be willing and able to help me." The corners of his lips twitched. "But I see this isn't this isn't the case. Never mind, Chloe-though your assistance was appreciated." He opened the book back up to the poem and folded his legs Indian style to, propping his elbows on his knees and leaning his head in both hands.

She bit her lip and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. "Someone tried to follow me," she blurted.

His head snapped up, his brows knitting. "What do you mean someone tried to follow you?" he asked her.

"I mean someone tried to follow me out of the library, but I took a cab from the bookshop and lost him."

"Is this why you won't collaborate with me?" he queried quietly.

"No," Chloe said. "I can take care of myself. I'm just more concerned…" She swallowed, and her cheeks felt hot and she stopped speaking.

"Concerned?" he prompted. "Concerned about what."

She bit her lip and looked up at him hopefully. "About you. What if it's something bad? I mean, you're a good person…or you _try_, and you do good things. You help people, even if it's for your own reasons."

"So even if we're not friends, you have no wish to see me harmed? Is that it, Chloe?" he asked her, steepling his fingers and leaning his chin on them.

"I never said we weren't friends," Chloe objected. "I mean, we're neighbors, acquaintances. We look out for each other…"

"I see now. So you'd like us to _be _friends."

She nodded quickly. "Platonic friends, of course," she added quickly.

"Platonic friends." He smiled. "Maybe even colleagues from time to time?"

"If it's needed. But remember, I have my own job, too."

He laughed. "But Chloe," he chuckled, "how can I forget _that_?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor is mine.**

**Thanks so much for the reviews. I always appreciate feedback, positive or otherwise. **

**Treadmill**

**Part Five**

_Ouch I have lost myself again _

_Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found, _

_Yeah I think that I might break _

_I've lost myself again and I feel unsafe_

_Be my friend _

_Hold me, wrap me up _

_Unfold me _

_I am small I'm needy _

_Warm me up _

_And breathe me _

-from the song "Breathe Me" by Sia

He shut the book with a slam and she stood up and straightened her turtleneck sweater. She glanced at the bedroom about her, cluttered with, well…_everything. _Books on everything she could imagine, much of it to do with criminology and science, and several stacks of papers littered the desk and the dresser. How could someone who appeared so neat most of the time be such a slob?

"When your father comes by with the copy of _Paradise Lost_, we can start looking," he told her decidedly. "Has he rung you yet, or anything?"

"Not yet," Chloe said, though Sherlock smirked when Chloe's mobile went off to the song "Pictures of You." She went to her purse and fished it out. Indeed, it was Ralph.

She made a face at Sherlock and hit the _send_ button to take the call. "Hello?" she said.

"Clo." It was Ralph. Sherlock leaned forward and pressed his fingers together, resting his chin on his fingertips, listening eagerly. "I just got your email. You're saying you need my copy of _Paradise Lost_?"

"For research," Chloe replied. "Someone made a reference to it in some crappy novel I'm editing and I think there's something incorrect. So if I could…"

"Why not make a night of it, Clo?" Ralph interjected brightly. "There's someone I want you to meet."

_Shit. _Trust Ralph to invite himself over using the fatherly excuse of wanting to show off what he believed to be his intelligent, accomplished daughter to some colleague or a new girlfriend.

Sherlock was watching her every expression now, and he seemed more and more amused as she became more and more agitated.

"Why not invite your good friend, John? I want to see him again. I like him, Clo. He's good for you."

"For the umpteenth time, Dad, John is just a good friend who lives downstairs. He has a girlfriend."

"Well, he can bring her, too."

Chloe bit the insides of her cheeks to keep herself from crying or shouting obscenities at Sherlock and Ralph.

"Dinner? At six? Don't worry, Clo, just get carryout and I'll pay you back for it. I've also got a few bottles of Pinot Grigio to get rid of, and I'll bring them 'round. Italian should do."

Chloe didn't know whether to throw her mobile at Sherlock or kick him. He was laughing…_laughing_ at the absurdity of the whole situation, whatever conclusions he had drawn from this conversation and her countenance.

"Who's that?" Ralph asked absently. "He can stay, if you have someone over…"

"Just a friend," Chloe said. "Look, Dad, I have to go. Six o'clock. I'll see you then."

"Good." Ralph seemed reassured. And then at length he asked her, "You're still my best girl, Clo?"

Chloe felt her heart a bit and smiled in spite of herself. "Dad, you know I'm always your best girl," she replied.

"I'm glad, Clo." His voice trembled, but he cleared his throat to regain his composure. "Six, then. Okay?"

"Okay, Dad," Chloe said, her face growing soft. "And don't forget the book." When she disconnected the call, she rounded on Sherlock, glaring at him.

"So it's an impromptu dinner at your flat?" Sherlock was amused. "Is your father bringing around a new squeeze for your approval?"

"You're not funny…though he invited you to dinner."

"Dinner." Sherlock shook his head. "Dinner with his best girl?"

"John and Sarah are invited, too. I'm ordering, he's buying."

Sherlock's demeanor changed. "I think that dinner would be delightful. Six o'clock, Chloe?"

"Six," Chloe said, and he leapt from his bed and followed her of the bedroom. "

John, you won't believe the sudden turn of events. Ralph Gaynor has decided to invite us all to dinner," he announced cheerfully.

"Really?" John and Sarah had been going through take-away menus, trying to decide what they should get for dinner, but now it looked as though plans had been changed. "Where for dinner?"

"Upstairs at Chloe's. Not a long walk at all." Sherlock's mood seemed to brighten considerably. "What are we having, Chloe?"

"Dad wants Italian," Chloe said, her face paling. "I mean, you don't _have_ to come. It's going to be terribly awkward. Whenever my dad meets someone new, he likes to bring them around and have them meet me, and then he wants to know what I think."

"Because Chloe is his best girl," Sherlock added snidely. She whirled around to face him, but his expression was impassive. "You might want to get a bottle of wine, John. Chloe might have some tidying up to do." He turned away and hurried into his bedroom to dress.

Sarah watched Chloe as the younger woman picked up her purse and laptop case to return upstairs. "Why not go buy the bottle of wine, John? I can go up and help you, Chloe. We'll see if we need anything else and ring you if we do."

Chloe was surprised. "Thanks," she said. She dug into her purse and handed John some cash. "Here. He's bringing Pinot Grigio, so get a red, maybe."

"What are we eating?" John asked Chloe as she picked up her coat.

"The Italian restaurant around the corner has a really good grilled chicken pesto on fettucine," Chloe said. "Six orders of that. And a salad and an appetizer and a dessert…" She shook her head as she walked out of the flat and sauntered out of the flat with Sarah behind her. She unlocked the door to her own flat and put down things, then went straight for the fridge in the kitchen. She opened the freezer for the cheesecake her father had brought her the last time he was here but they had never opened, and she opened the fridge to take out the heads of Romaine lettuce and the tomatoes that she had bought during the week.

"Your flat is actually clean," Sarah remarked, noting the lack of clutter on the kitchen table and most of the furniture. Chloe had spread out to work on the coffee table yesterday morning in front of some old film noirs in her DVD player.

"I try," Chloe said, "but it's hard keeping it up sometimes. There's always hair that needs to be vacuumed up because I have a long-haired dog. I just need to vacuum and wipe down the table and the bathroom and put some stuff away." She went into the cupboard for the container of disinfectant wipes and for some glass cleaner.

"Let me do that," Sarah offered, "and then you can vacuum."

Chloe was very pleased with this arrangement. John's girlfriend was very nice-very nice indeed. She even called John and asked him to get more snacks while he was out-crackers and some type of specific cheese spread-while Chloe opened up a bag of pretzels and a canister of mixed nuts to set out. She called the restaurant she had talked about to have what she wanted delivered.

Sherlock came up with Lilly as Chloe was pouring herself and Sarah some Riesling. "Good," Chloe said as she went into her purse for the cash to give the deliveryman, "you can go get the food when it comes. In the meantime, here." She handed him the silverware. "Set the table."

He glanced at her impassively and set to laying the silverware out on the table, six spots precisely measured out. Chloe went through some of her CDs and put Chopin, Michael Bublé, and a few mixed CDs from her ITunes library into the changer.

"Are you going to light candles, too?" he asked her sourly. She made a face at him and set Lilly's dish down, full of dog food.

John returned with what Sarah had asked him to pick up and a bottle of Merlot. "Thanks!" Chloe said.

And behind him was Ralph Gaynor, his eyes bright and his face alight with a smile, the book clutched in his hand. And a middle-aged woman, with a dark, layered bob that skimmed her shoulders and a lukewarm face.

"Clo!" Ralph exclaimed, and he crossed the room and took her by the elbow, leading her over to his guest. "How are you, sweetheart?"

"Fine," Chloe said, handing the book off to Sherlock. "Can I take your coat, Dad, and yours…"

"Celia," the woman said quickly, surveying Chloe's flat with an almost impressed air. "Celia Vining."

"Nice to meet you," Chloe smiled, and Ralph took Celia's coat and hung it up in the closet.

A girlfriend. So her dad had a new girlfriend. Well, this one seemed nicer than the others, she supposed. So her dad was going to see if Chloe approved, because if Chloe didn't approve, then neither would her sisters.

Well, wasn't it all too convenient that Sherlock was here? Chloe wouldn't even have to entertain. Sherlock would be the life of the party.

In a very disconcerting way.

"Dad, you remember John," Chloe said politely. Ralph turned to John, then grinned, reaching out to shake his hand.

"How are you?" he asked John.

"Doing well, thanks," John answered. "This is Sarah."

"Nice to meet you, Sarah."

"Nice to meet you, too," Sarah replied, smiling.

Now Ralph turned to Sherlock. "And I remember you-we had a few chats when you first moved in. Sherlock Holmes, isn't it? I started following your blog…fascinating stuff."

"You have a blog?" Celia said as Chloe opened a bottle of the Pinot Grigio and poured Celia and her father a glass. "Which one?"

"The Science of Deduction," Sherlock answered almost stiffly as he sipped at his mineral water.

"He's a private investigator, Celia," Ralph explained as they went to sit down.

"A private investigator. You mean women pay you to find out if their husbands are cheating?" Celia said as they went to sit in Chloe's living room.

"No." Sherlock took the chair while Sarah and John appropriated the loveseat. "I'm a consulting detective. When the police can't make any headway on a case, they _consult_ me."

"Interesting," Celia said.

Chloe took a long sip of wine.

This was going to be a long night.

* * *

"So you're seeing my daughter?" Ralph asked Sherlock as they went downstairs to get the delivered take-away.

Sherlock stopped dead in his tracks. "I beg your pardon?" he said.

Ralph stopped on the landing. "I asked if you were seeing my daughter. You look like the type she'd go after-smart as a whip, posh, a little aloof, extremely educated. Not that I care. It's her mum who's hard to impress. That's why Clo keeps everything quiet and will probably do that till the ring is on her finger."

"Ralph." Sherlock laughed. "I'm not seeing your daughter. She's…a friend."

Ralph frowned, then let Sherlock pass. "I just want Clo to be happy," he said.

"I know. I deduced it from the day I first met you," Sherlock replied blandly. "From what I can deduce now, you seem very happy with Celia. It's been six months with her, hasn't it?"

Ralph's lips thinned. "And _how _do you know this?"

"It was on the calendar in your phone when you checked it to tell Chloe about a deadline of yours," Sherlock explained in a bored voice. "The watch is from Celia, too-a Breitling that just came out in February. I just wrapped up a case for a client who had the same watch. Very new and very expensive. You gave her the diamond pendant she wore tonight-which is also very new and very expensive. Six months last week, and you exchanged gifts."

Ralph's face lit up again with a smile. "Well," he said, "that was amazing. Now I see why Chloe brought you around."

"And why is that?" Sherlock prompted.

"She wanted your observations on Celia before she approved."

And that, Sherlock had to admit to himself, was some of the truth.

* * *

"Was dinner a disappointment?" Chloe asked Sherlock as she wiped off the last of her dishes and put it in the cupboard.

Sherlock looked up from the book and leaned his head back to stretch his neck and stretched his arms over his head. "Surprisingly, no," he answered. "It was very diverting. Your father is an interesting man, Chloe. It's impossible to be bored around him. He's very intelligent, but unfortunately his medications muddle it, and he can't think as clearly as he should be able to."

She clicked her nails on the counter. "You've never seen him go from a manic high to a depressive low, Sherlock. It's terrifying."

He sipped at his coffee and furrowed his brow. "You'd know about that level of inner terror, wouldn't you, Chloe? When you feel terrible about yourself and you don't know what's wrong, and no one will listen to you? When you're being sucked down into darkness and you're clinging to whatever you can to keep from losing yourself in it?"

"Do you know about it?" she asked him, going over to the couch and sitting down beside him.

He furrowed his brow into an exasperated expression. "I'm not talking about _me_. I'm talking about you."

She dug her nails into her palms. Thirteen years ago. Yes, all that time ago. "I was sixteen years old. My mom and my dad didn't believe me when I said I was depressed. I was just being dramatic and wanted attention, they said. So I decided to be dramatic and get their attention."

"You decided you would kill yourself in New York."

"My mom was more upset that I was going to go through with it than anything else. I mean, stealing the credit card was bad, but it was only a hundred dollars, and I paid her back that right away. My dad felt guilty he had blown me off." She swallowed hard. "I think he still does."

"He does." Sherlock smoothed out the printed email from his website over the open book on his lap. "'I just want Chloe to be happy.' He said that to me earlier tonight. But of course, I'd known that from the moment I met him."

She put aside her water and pulled off her boots and socks, setting them down on the floor in front of her. She tucked her legs up underneath her and watched him. "Do you ever feel it, the darkness you talked about?"

He stopped reading the email. "No. I think too clearly and can recognize it. Most of the time it comes when I'm between cases, when I'm bored."

"That's why I asked you to come out with me today," she said. "It's not good to be cooped up like that when you're bored. If you're bored, then find things to occupy yourself."

He chuckled. "You make it sound too easy."

"My everyday job is boring," she went on. "You know that. That's why I go on those trips with my dad and take care of a lot of his stuff. That's how I keep from going crazy…even if he drives me crazy."

He stared down at the printout of the email message once more, and then produced his phone from his pocket and used it to scan the Internet. Chloe rose and went for one last glass of wine for the night.

A friend. Sherlock was a friend. And it was nice to be able to open up about running away when she had been younger. She didn't talk about it with a lot of people, not even the men she'd dated, not even her best friends from college and even here in England.. They just knew that she'd had chronic depression since she'd been a teenager and that was it. That she took medication for it and was okay now. That she had screwy ways of dealing with things so she wouldn't become depressed again. Because that was what Chloe feared most: the endless dark nights of the soul, the always trying to feel happiness and never being able feel it, the guilt, the crying, the wanting to sleep all the time, the lack of energy, the inability to think or produce or write or even read.

She shivered. The hospital. She'd been in the ICU. The internist, rubbing his eyes and asking her why. The nurses always trying to take her blood to see if her levels were okay. And charcoal…drinking the charcoal to counteract the aspirin had been the worst. The needles in her right wrist-the one she hadn't slit-to take the blood…those had hurt, and she had screamed for her mother.

She had always know she would never do anything stupid like that again.

"It wasn't stupid, you know, Chloe," he murmured suddenly.

"What wasn't?" she said.

"You were sixteen years old, and no one would help you even though you'd asked. You thought that being dead was better than feeling so terrible. It's actually quite logical."

He turned to face her and stared at her with a glint of something in his eyes. Pity? Understanding? She didn't know what, and in a way, she didn't care.

"Chloe."

"Yeah?"

"The email."

"What about it?"

He sprang up and came to her side in the kitchen, placing the paper on the counter. "It's a message. I thought it was a puzzle, but no, it was a message."

"What do you mean by a message?" she said.

"Someone decided to be clever," he explained to her, "and make me believe it was a cipher, when it's really not…not particularly. Look. _Oft times nothing profits more than self-esteem, grounded on just and right, well-managed. This is servitude, to serve the unwise._"

"He wanted you to rearrange them and make what sense out of it you could. So that's the beginning of the letter, then, his opinion of you and what you do." She set aside her wineglass and watched as he put together the rest of the message.

"_And out of good still to find means of evil. Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell from heaven; for even in heaven his looks and thoughts were always downward bent, admiring more the riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, than ought divine or holy else enjoyed in vision beatific. Ease would recant, vows made in pain, as violent and void._"

"In the first two sentences," Sherlock said, "he's explaining his reasons for doing what he does, and it sounds as though he could be making some comparisons between himself and me."

"Who?" she queried.

"I've only run into the name a few times," he told her. "And I was able to get someone to give it. Moriarty."

"Who's that?" Chloe whispered.

He didn't answer her, but instead he referred to the remaining quote. _"My sentence is for open war; of wiles more unexpert I boast not: then let those contrive who need, or when they need, not now."_

She set her wineglass down and clenched her fists to keep her hands from trembling. "Sherlock. Does it say what I think it says?"

He slid his pale blue eyes up to meet her dark blue ones levelly. "Yes, Chloe. Yes, it does."

She leaned over to bring the paper closer to her, and she read the sentences as he had written them down once, twice, three times.

Sherlock's phone beeped as a text came through. He clicked through to read it, and Chloe felt her gorge rise when she read it.

_Ololon._


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor is mine.**

**Thanks so much for the reviews. I always appreciate feedback, positive or otherwise. **

**Treadmill**

**Part Six**

_Yeah we live _

_and we breathe _

_But do we learn what we need? _

_Circling around _

_Cause you never picked the _

_pieces off the ground _

_Vultures in the air _

_If you wait another moment _

_you'll be theirs _

_-_from the song "Vultures" by Glass Pear

Sunday. Sunday usually meant cleaning in Chloe's case, maybe attending Mass at some new Catholic church because she had grown tired of the one she had been attending previously.

She didn't go to Mass today, though. She hadn't gone in a few weeks. But she was up; John could hear her moving around upstairs and the slight strains of music repeating themselves.

"Ugh, it's enough to drive me insane," Sherlock muttered as he flipped through the newspaper and then picked up his phone to scroll through the foreign news services. "She's been doing it for half an hour, playing the same song over and over again. How does she think when she does that? How can _I_ think?"

"How can we eat breakfast when there's no breakfast to eat?" John demanded as he went through the cupboards. He held one open to make his point. "Look. Empty. I thought you were going to go to the market yesterday."

"Boring," Sherlock opined. "Why not go upstairs and see if she has any leftovers, and tell her to turn on another song, too?"

John glowered at Sherlock, then opened the flat door to go upstairs to Chloe's. He heard the second bridge of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" drift down, and Chloe singing along with it but unable to hit the higher notes.

_Heathcliff, it's me-e, Cathyyyyyy…_

He knocked on the door and she called out for him to come in. She was in the bathroom, scrubbing out the tub. He could smell bleach and it made him think of a pool and swimming and the scent of chlorine that always lingered after. She peered out the door at him.

"Hi!" she called. She came out of the bathroom and turned down the stereo, turning to face him. "Did you guys need something?"

He watched as Lilly jumped off of the couch and came to sniff at his shoes, and he answered almost sheepishly, "I haven't had breakfast. There's no food downstairs. I ask Sherlock to go to the store, he doesn't go, so I come home to no food. Do you have anything left from last night?"

Chloe scrutinized him for a moment, then rolled her eyes and led him to the cupboard. "Do want oatmeal or cold cereal? I have waffles. I can put bacon in the microwave. I can scramble eggs. What do you want?"

"I thought you didn't cook," John said.

"My culinary skills are very minimal," she replied. "When you live in a sorority house during college and they have a cook there, you miss out on learning some things." She stood aside and opened the fridge. "But I can scramble eggs. I don't know how good they are. And I can make this recipe with oatmeal and grated apple…it's so good."

"So there's more to your repertoire than guacamole and chipped beef dip?" John asked, laughing.

"Who told you I only can make guacamole and beef dip?" Chloe said curiously, her brow wrinkling. And then she put two and two together, and she pressed her lips together and shook her head. "He's such a know-it-all. He thinks he knows everything about everybody because he can see it, but he really doesn't, you know?"

John couldn't disagree with Chloe's observation, opinion, whatever it was. "How about that oatmeal you told me about?" he said to her.

She smiled and went about gathering the ingredients for it, washing her hands before really touching anything. She began to grate the apple and with her brows knitted, she went on.

"I mean, he's ridiculous. But he's fun-you know? He's not stupid. Do you know how many men I've dated who are actually stupid-like complete idiots? That's not Sherlock. Well, I mean, that's not you, either, but you're normal, you know? He's not. I can talk about anything with you, even my job or my research or whatever I do for my dad. But with Sherlock, it's straight intellectual talk. It's like when I was in grad school. I like it." She caught herself and added ironically, "So I've decided I'll stop dating and live here at Baker Street forever. What do you think of my plan?"

"If you keep food in your kitchen and if I can keep my own food here, I'd be all for it. Sherlock might if you'd stop playing the same song over and over again," John said as he went to put some coffee in the coffeemaker. "And if I keep finding body parts in the refrigerator, I might actually take you up on use of your fridge."

Chloe stopped measuring out oatmeal and salt and whirled to face him. "You mean, there's body parts in your fridge-all over your flat?" She made a face. "What is he-some kind of psycho axe murderer?"

"It's experiments-forensic experiments," John explained. "All work-related, of course. When the police and Lestrade came in to look for drugs, they found eyes in the fridge. And once I found a torso in the bathtub-submerged, of course."

"That's just sick and wrong," Chloe said. "Remind me to never use your bathroom without bleaching it and having it blessed by a Catholic priest first." She returned to the oatmeal. "You're sure you want to eat after talking about it?"

He was positive he wanted to eat. He was starving.

"You can use my fridge if you want, you know," Chloe offered incongruously. "Just mark what's yours with a sharpie or something."

"You'd trust Sherlock Holmes in your flat, alone, when he's bored?" John asked her ironically.

"Not Sherlock Holmes. But you-seeing as you're not out to make anyone think you're a psycho axe murderer."

He went to take the CD changer off of repeat and hit shuffle like Chloe asked and "Wuthering Heights" stopped for awhile. She stirred the oatmeal while it boiled, then added the milk, butter, apples, and lemon juice and got him a bowl down from the cabinet.

"Help yourself," she told him, and she went to continue cleaning her bathroom.

Chloe still tried to be conversational. How was his sister? How was it going with the blog? Did Sarah have fun yesterday? After dominating the conversation whole she had cooked, she was giving him his turn at it.

Normal conversation, a clean refrigerator, and food in the house.

Without Chloe upstairs, John would have gone crazy.

"You were up there awhile," Sherlock remarked. "And you reek of bleach."

"She was cleaning," John said. "She was cleaning her bathroom. She actually takes pride in the place where she lives and doesn't keep body parts in her fridge."

Sherlock laughed. "What-do you want her to come down here to clean our bathroom with bleach?"

John sat down with his own smirk as he opened his laptop. "A Catholic priest would have to bless it first. You know quite well why."

Sherlock frowned at this and reached for his violin.

John was secretly pleased that he'd been able to quote Chloe in a lighthearted insult and put Sherlock in his place for once.

* * *

"Where are you going?" Sherlock asked Chloe Tuesday morning as she descended the staircase.

"Westminster Abbey. Dad wants pictures of Mary Tudor's tomb. Then it's off to get permission for showing images of the paintings of her and Henry V for the book." She buttoned up her peacoat. "Mrs. Hudson will let Lilly out, so you're off the hook. Later."

"You dressed up. You never wear skirts unless it's for business."

She stopped and turned on the landing to face him. "Why do you care anything about what I wear?"

"Because it tells me what you intend on doing for the day," he answered nonchalantly. "And I would love to join you and your father."

She stared in disbelief as he hurried into his flat and came downstairs a few minutes later with his coat on and as he tucked his mobile into his pocket. "I never invited you to come."

"But it seems that you find something to do to keep from being bored, and I thought I'd follow your example. But then I could also be taking you up on your offer from Saturday." He made a show of checking his watch and hurried down the stairs and passed her on the landing. "Well, come on, Chloe, aren't we going to be late?"

Chloe groaned and followed him downstairs. "So since John is working, you're using me as a source of entertainment?" she accused him as he hailed a taxi.

"No." He looked down at her and she narrowed her eyes at him. "Heeled boots, Chloe. Who are you trying to attract?"

She glared at him as he opened the door for her and as she got in, and she gave the destination-Westminster Abbey-to the driver. "Now let's get one thing straight," Chloe said to Sherlock as the taxi pulled into traffic, "if I dress a certain way, it's because I like dressing that way. It's not for you or for any other guy but for _me_. Because I take pride in myself and in my work, and if I feel I'm dressed appropriately, then I do well."

He nodded and turned away to look out the window. "Point taken."

"Point taken?" she echoed. "That's all you have to say?"

"If you're not drooling over me or throwing yourself at me, then it makes it all the easier."

"Makes _what_ all the easier?"

"Working with you…and forming a working relationship with you."

"I thought you worked alone."

"For the most part. But I'm sure as you know, I take on colleagues."

Chloe shook her head. "You're ridiculous."

"That's almost becoming a compliment, Chloe."

"Oh, and do you want me to say worse?"

The corners of his mouth quirked as though he were holding back a snicker. "You've said worse. I believe the word of choice was 'asshat'."

She straightened, her shoulders tensing. "You weren't supposed to hear that!" she said, embarrassed.

He shrugged. "It was awhile ago, before I really began to speak with you. And it was overheard. And don't worry-I've had much worse said to me."

He paid for the cab, something which she was pleasantly surprised at, and her mobile rang and she picked it up.

"Are you running late, Clo?" she heard Ralph ask her.

"No, I'm right outside the building. Someone decided to tag along at the last minute." Chloe flashed Sherlock an evil look, at which he scowled and looked away.

"No matter," Ralph said. "Hurry and get here, Clo. We're by the tomb right now."

Chloe turned off her mobile and put it in her bag. "Ready?"

"After you," Sherlock replied.

Ralph hadn't been surprised that Sherlock had come with Chloe. He merely gave Sherlock a once-over, smiled and said, "Good morning. Clo, can you call them over at the Tate Gallery? They're giving me a hard time about getting a copy of a certain portrait for the book. Ask for whatever her name is…Lucy."

Chloe unbuttoned her coat and took her phone out from her purse. "Really, Dad? They wouldn't talk to you? Why not?"

"They must hear my name and decide not to help me," Ralph said as he opened up his planner, scanning over the calendar as his new agent walked in.

Chloe closed her eyes and rubbed her temples with both of her index fingers and sighed audibly. "Maybe it's because of how you deal with them," she said.

"I think they like you better, Clo. You have such a way of dealing with people-really she does," Ralph insisted to Sherlock.

"Oh, of course she does," Sherlock said agreeably. Which was interesting.

Sherlock always found Ralph Gaynor to be diverting to observe, and the relationship between Ralph and Chloe was a complex one of ups and downs and constant reversals of the parent-child role. Ralph dictated to the photographer what he wanted, and Chloe spent most of her time on the phone, speaking with this or that gatekeeper to whatever it was Ralph needed for his book. She rummaged through her bag for a pen and some paper, taking down notes, and she smiled wanly up at Sherlock.

He had noticed everything when he arrived: the way the new agent and the photographer had looked at Chloe, as though they were awestruck by her. Before, he had thought her funny-looking, with her heart-shaped face, delicate jaw, and slightly pointed chin, and what Anderson had termed her "piggy nose and crooked mouth." But there was more to it than what Sherlock thought. It was the way in which she carried herself, the way she took pride in her dress when it related to work, the way in which the photographer was stealing glances at her derriere in the charcoal skirt she was wearing and her well-toned calves from ballet under the black tights and heeled black boots. And Chloe was-well, she was _interesting_. She was keeping him from boredom, and it wasn't as though she was stupid.

But then the text came in from Lestrade.

_Come immediately. Body found in East End. Known drug dealer._

Sherlock felt his boredom disperse. The exhilaration thrummed in his veins, and he felt his mind wake up, stretch, and become alert. He texted Lestrade back. _Will be right there. What is the location?_

Lestrade gave him the location.

Sherlock glanced at Chloe, who was leaning against a wall, on the phone, writing something down, arguing with someone.

Really, Ralph needed to get his agent to do that or hire an administrative assistant. How was that Chloe's responsibility?

Why not take Chloe?

She was smart enough, and asked the right questions, though sometimes there could be too many of them.

And it would get her out of _this_.

Sherlock waited until the photographer bowed to some stupid idea to photograph Ralph and Chloe, then Chloe and himself, in front of Bloody Mary's tomb.

And then he sprang the trap.

* * *

Chloe went over her texts as the sat in the cab.

"My dad thinks we're dating."

Sherlock snorted. He-dating! And _Chloe_, of all people! Crooked-smiled Chloe! "I wonder where he got that idea from."

"Not that I care," Chloe said. "It was nice. No one tried to hit on me."

"So you liked that I found a way to finagle you out of doing things for your father, then?" he said as she lifted her face to eye him levelly.

"This time, yeah," she said.

"So how do you feel about crime scenes?" he asked her.

Her eyelids flickered down, as though she were thinking about it. "I don't know," she replied. "Are they gory?"

"They can be."

"But you'll be there, of course."

"I never said I wouldn't be there, Chloe."

"Well then." She inclined her head, her eyes sparkling. "If you're there, how bad can it be?"

Oh, Chloe!

She still had so much to learn!


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor is mine.**

**Thanks so much for the reviews. I always appreciate feedback, positive or otherwise. **

**Treadmill**

**Part Seven**

_Chances lost are hopes torn up pages_

_Maybe this time_

_Chances are we´ll be the combination_

_Chances come and carry me_

_Chances are waiting to be taken_

_And I can see_

_Chances are the fascination_

_Chances won't escape from me_

_Chances are only what we make them_

_And all I need _

-from the song "Chances" by Five for Fighting

Detective Inspector Lestrade was never surprised to see John Watson with Sherlock Holmes anymore, but he was surprised at the pretty brunette who accompanied Sherlock this time.. He heard Sergeant Donovan gasp when the duo stepped under the tape marking the crime-scene boundary.

"Bloody hell. Now the freak has a girlfriend," Sally muttered.

"It's not his girlfriend, it's his neighbor-the girl who lives in the upstairs flat. The girl with the dog."

"Who sat on the stairs crying to her mum when we raided Sherlock's flat…oh, _that_ one." Lestrade heard Donovan clear her throat as the two approached. He went to meet them halfway as Anderson glanced up from examining the crime scene to get a look the woman. He could have sworn he had seen Donovan's lips tighten as Anderson's eyes lingered .

"It's about time you got here," Lestrade said to Sherlock. "Anderson is having fits about having to wait until after you're done to gather evidence."

"Well, we shouldn't continue to waste your time then, should we?" Sherlock said blandly. He gestured to the woman. "Chloe Gaynor, an associate. You probably remember her."

"I do, now." He smiled at Chloe, who smiled back.

She had also turned up her nose at Sergeant Freeman when he offered to take her to an Indian restaurant.

"Nice to see you again," he said.

Chloe smiled, too. "Under less stressful circumstances," she riposted, a smile twisting on her lips.

Sergeant Donovan came up behind him. "So you ready to take a look at the body, Sherlock?" she asked loudly. "We've got work to do here and a crime scene to process before it gets too late."

"Sure, once Anderson gets over here. How are things with him, by the way, Sergeant?" Sherlock smiled knowingly at Donovan. "Been scrubbing his floors again, I see?"

Lestrade cleared his throat and let Sherlock go on ahead of them. Chloe followed, keeping her face as composed as possible but biting her cheeks to keep from laughing. So she thought Sherlock was funny, did she? She obviously hadn't yet dealt with the consulting detective in his more trying moments, and a few times at a few different crime scenes would show her how difficult and how condescending could be and what Lestrade and those under him had to put up with.

Chloe knelt down beside Sherlock, her face a little pale, as she stared down at the body of the man in front of them.

Lestrade drew in his breath with a hiss.

While listening to Sherlock, he could see that Anderson was stealing glances of Chloe's derriere in the charcoal-colored A-line skirt she was wearing.

And he knew then that Sherlock had done this deliberately.

* * *

"So why do you want me here again?" Chloe said as they got out of the taxi. Sherlock took the cash out of his wallet and beat Chloe to paying the cabbie.

"You looked like you could use some time away from your father, and he looks like he needs to learn how to do things on his own." He took in the crime scene from where they stood for a moment, and then added, "You might be of some assistance to me."

"What if I don't want to be of assistance to you?" Chloe retorted.

"Your very presence here is already a great help to me. Now put on a nice face for Sally Donovan."

Chloe was icily polite to Sally; it was a very easy thing to do since Sally was facetiously courteous to Sherlock. And then what was up with the Severus Snape wannabe, the crime scene tech?

She didn't want to know.

The body of a man lay facedown on the ground, and he has been shot execution style. Chloe knelt down beside Sherlock, farthest away from the line of sight of the bullet entry wound as she could get. She heard Anderson step behind her.

"Well?" Lestrade said. "What have we got?"

"Drug-dealer, small-time," Sherlock declared. He searched the pockets of the man's coat with gloved hands. "Just starting to get into the methamphetamine business, I see. And he makes it, too." Sherlock held up a package of decongestant made with pseudoephedrine.

"His jacket is old and maybe cheap," Chloe piped up. "Look-the leather at the right sleeve has begun to crack and pull away from the cuff." She pointed to the cuff, and Sherlock noted it.

"Well done." He smiled. "Did you see the wear along the bottom of the jeans?"

"His shoelaces are ratty, too. He must not make a lot of money at this," Chloe said. "Or maybe he's a user, too. Look how skinny he is…and he looks like he picked at his face a little bit. Does he have a pipe?"

Lestrade and Anderson bent down to rummage through the pockets, and Lestrade pulled out a dirty glass pipe from the victim's inner coat pocket.

"Check the teeth," Sherlock told Anderson. "Usually their teeth are rotten."

Anderson knelt down beside Chloe, who scooted out of the way, and he turned the head around to open the mouth.

"They're rotted," he verified. His eyes slid surreptitiously to Chloe. She returned his wondering stare with an icy one and stood up, hurrying away from the scene with the body.

"We'll have it taken to St. Bart's," she heard Anderson tell Sherlock. "You'll want to look in on it after the autopsy's been done?"

"I'll be by shortly." Sherlock turned to Lestrade. "You're looking at a small-time dealer who was skimming off of his supplier's profits at first, then who decided to go into business on his own on the sly. The supplier didn't like that-so…" Sherlock pointed down at the bullet wound. "Text me with the findings from the autopsy. Once you've sorted through the belongings, I want to take a look at those, too. And text me once you've done that." He removed the surgical gloves and came to Chloe's side, a mischievous light in his eyes.

"You're up to something," she accused him.

"Pure conjecture without any evidence, Chloe," he said mockingly. "I thought you were learning better than that."

"So why did you have me come with you?" she asked him as he hurried away from the scene. "So the Severus Snape wannabe could stare at my ass?"

He looked at her askance. "Who?"

"You never read Harry Potter?"

"Children's books?" He furrowed his brow. "How would children's books apply to the work I do, Chloe? Answer me that question."

Chloe sighed audibly. "Right. Because you only care to know things that _are _applicable to what you do."

"Is that such a bad thing?" he demanded as she hailed a taxi.

She pursed her lips and thought for a moment. "Not really. But I think it would be kind of boring."

She opened the door to the taxi and got in, and he climbed in beside her, regarding her coldly. "So you're saying that I'm boring?"

"I don't know. What do you deduce, smarty?"

He stared at her for a long while, then he said, "You _do_ think I'm boring. If you think that, Chloe, then I would have left you to take care of the paperwork for your father. Should I have done that?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" she exclaimed. "Look, I never said you were boring _per se_. I just said that that's a boring way to live. Basically, your attitude toward seemingly trivial things that might actually be pertinent to daily life and therefore applicable to your work sucks!"

"Good, another person who knows all of the rubbish that I don't need to fill my head with," he said with an air of finality.

"What do you mean _rubbish_?" Chloe said curiously, eying him almost cynically.

"Rubbish-trivial things. All of the details of someone's personal life-even a historical figure, who sleeps with whom, who left his wife for another actress…"

"Whether or not the Earth goes around the sun," Chloe added, going through her purse for her Ipod. "That's from the blog. Did you read it yet?"

He made a sort of mumbling noise. "Of course I read it," he said airily. "But we have more important things to focus on right now."

"Such as?" Chloe prompted, sticking one earbud in her ear and scrolling through her playlist.

"Such as _this._" From his pocket, he produced a wrinkled slip of paper with an address scrawled upon it.

"How did you get that?" she demanded.

He smirked and handed it to her. "I lifted it from the dead man's pocket."

"You didn't share it with Lestrade?" She read the handwriting and her eyes widened. An address to a house…in a bad part of town.

"No." He was staring out the window, keeping track of the streets and the landmarks along the way. So was this if he ever had to come back to wherever they were going on foot?

"Is this where we're going?" she said.

"Where else would we be going?"

"Where else do you _think_ we would be going?"

"I don't know-St. Bart's, maybe?" she suggested, settling on Rihanna's "Disturbia."

"Try again." His voice was soft, smooth, deep, his tone nonchalant as always, as though he were looking down at the lowly world below from his vantage point on the mountain high above, but gazing down at her with teasing eyes, daring her to come up. Daring her to brave whatever perils awaited her on the journey so that she could come up and stand at his side and see what he saw.

"The address listed here?" Disgusted, she threw the paper at him. "This is crazy!"

"You said your everyday job bored you," he reminded her, turning to face her with that detached, pompous expression on his face. "So I'm making your day more interesting."

"I don't think you're making my day more interesting by involving me in your dirty work," she countered.

"It's not dirty work, Chloe," he corrected. "This is what I do, and this is what I _enjoy_ doing. I remember you said awhile ago that making a living out of something you enjoy is a good thing. So take it or leave it, whatever you want to do."

She put the other earbud in her ear and turned up the music.

Sherlock Holmes was going to be the reason she ended up in jail tonight and in the papers tomorrow.

She didn't know whether to hate him for it or be thankful to him for it. She felt alive, as though every muscle within her was tense and ready for action, as though she were in the middle of something big but had to keep it quiet for fear of ruining it. It was so much better than sitting at her desk all day and editing bodice rippers while casting lingering glances at _The Maltese Falcon_ or _The Glass Key _as they played in the DVD player. This was reality, and it was happening to her, and she was thrilled at the prospect of it. Even if she ended up in jail tonight, at least it was because she was doing something daring for a good cause.

Right?

_Right?_

She stole a furtive glance at him as he stared out the window in earnest, still absorbed in keeping track of the way here. There was something alluring about seeing him in the chase, in the thrill of the game. She never would have thought him to be attractive in any other scenario, and to be honest, when she had first met him, she had thought him to be not much to look at. He had seemed to be cold, haughty, and calculating.

But Sherlock Holmes, with his dark curling hair and piercing blue eyes and determined, dogged air, was nice to look at right now.

She just couldn't let him know that. Because he would take it and run away with it.

* * *

He touched her forearm gently, and she jumped when she felt it. "We're here," he said to her, and she turned off her Ipod and put it away.

"I'm not liking here," she said to him as he paid the cabbie, and then she followed him down the shabby, puddle-covered sidewalk, past the shabby terrace houses that once must have been part of some kind of estate.

"No one said you had to like it," he told her. "Do you have your mace with you?"

"Yeah," she said. "Why? Will I need it?"

"Let's hope not." He glanced at the slip of paper again and then shoved it back into his pocket. "And here we are."

It was another shabby terrace house, made of faded brick and with grimy windows and broken concrete steps. Sherlock opened the door and let out a cry of exhilaration.

"What is it?" she asked him as she stepped inside, wrinkling her nose at the stale smell of last night's fried onions that lingered in the hallway.

"Flats," he said. He took out the paper again. "We're looking at number four." Without another word, he climbed up the stairs across from the doorway and stopped. "Aren't you coming?"

Chloe sighed. She could hardly believe her day was turning out like this. First, tampering with a crime scene investigation. Then withholding evidence. Now what?

"Chloe."

She removed her gloves and stuffed them into her pockets, then darted up the stairs after him. "I feel like a monkey in some shenanigan," she grumbled.

"It's not a shenanigan, but a case, Chloe," he corrected. He wandered down the hall until they found number four, and he put his hand on the doorknob and tried to turn it. "Locked." He unbuttoned his wool coat and knelt down in front of the doorknob, staring at the lock with narrowed eyes and a bit lip. He cocked his head, squinting at it, and Chloe checked the hallway fearfully to see if anyone was coming.

"What are you doing?" she hissed at him.

"Just a minute, Chloe." He pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket, and then went through the different shapes and types of keys until he found a certain kind. He then inserted the key into the lock, turned it, and opened the door.

"_Voilà_," he said, standing up and holding out his arm ironically. "After you."

Add to that breaking and entering.

Or would it be burglary?

She entered the apartment and he followed her, and he closed the door behind them.

The first thing she noticed was the smell. It made her gag.

It was the smell of urine, of stale, human urine, as though someone had actually decided not to use the toilet and just to relieve themselves on the floor on a regular basis.

And of something else.

She watched as Sherlock gave the flat a once-over, looking in drawers, pushing open doors, lifting up the cushions on couches and chairs.

"Take a preliminary look at the bedrooms, won't you, Chloe? It will save me some time," he ordered as he pulled several items out of what appeared to be the silverware drawer of a very dirty kitchen.

"This place is a shit pit," she said as she entered the little hallway. "Your flat is even cleaner than this."

"Even with the body parts in the refrigerator?" he called.

"That's a whole new level of wacked-out that we haven't discussed yet." She opened the door to the bathroom. Dirty again, reeking of piss and vomit. Nice. So she would be skipping lunch after this, she thought.

The first bedroom. Actually used as a bedroom, with an air mattress in the center and sheets tossed haphazardly aside. Clearly whoever had lived here hadn't planned on remaining here for long.

She took a quick walk around the room. Three pairs of ratty shoes, faded t-shirts, dirty, mud-crusted jeans, and there was the dufflebag into which they all most likely fit. So did this mean the victim moved around a lot?

"What are you waiting for?" Sherlock asked her. She gasped and turned around with a start. He stood behind her, looking down at her with raised eyebrows as though she were crazy.

"Don't _do_ that," she said to him.

He didn't apologize. Instead, he brushed past her and picked up the dufflebag. "Go through his clothes for anything that could be a lead. Business cards, ticket stubs, receipts, anything."

Chloe went through the pockets of the jeans and pulled out a lighter, a few receipts from what looked to be a local pub and a local chip shop, and another glass pipe which was dirty and looked as though it has been used often.

"I have a name." Sherlock pulled a wallet out from the duffle bag and opened it, taking out an ID card and a library card. "Danny Carlson. From Liverpool. Interesting." He set aside the wallet and pulled out more articles from the duffle bag, mostly small plastic bags of what looked to be other types of drugs. Ecstasy. Crack cocaine. More meth. Medicine bottles of Valium, Adderall, and Oxycontin.

And then he very slowly pulled out a few baggies of what looked like regular cocaine.

He stared at it for a long time, then put it down.

"I'll check the second bedroom," he offered suddenly, striding across the room and leaving her.

She stood up slowly and followed him out. He had opened the door, and inside the second bedroom was a sort of makeshift mixing lab, like the kind she had seen watching _Cops_ on Saturday nights when she had been sober sister in her sorority or had been taking a break from studying for an exam.

"He mixes it here," Sherlock murmured. He took his mobile out of his coat pocket and began to text someone.

"Who…?" she began.

"Lestrade." He waited to put the mobile away until after the beep came signaling that Lestrade had sent him a reply text. "He's on his way."

Chloe felt her heart began to beat quickly. "Why did you contact _him_?" she demanded. "Now we're probably going to get arrested! What a way to end my day! Thanks a lot!"

"Lestrade isn't going to arrest anyone," Sherlock protested as he took her by the arm. "Come on. We'll need to meet him downstairs. You're not going to get arrested. Lestrade will be grateful for the lead we gave him, and we've already identified the body. He's going to be thrilled about it. I've done this before and he's never been angry and I haven't been arrested for it in a long time."

"In a long time?" she echoed. "Oh, well, that's just _great _to know!"

"Chloe, I mean it." Sherlock's face was stony and his voice was sincere. "You won't be arrested."

She sighed, holding up her hands in capitulation. "Fine then-I believe you. They won't arrest me." She followed him downstairs and sat down on the steps as he stood in front of them, watching out the window in the door for the police to arrive.

The cocaine. What had been up with that? It was almost as though he'd looked at it, as though he were contemplating whether or not to take some…

Or maybe it just troubled him.

"You're okay, aren't you?" she asked him suddenly.

"Okay about what?" he prompted.

She hesitated, biting her lip. "The drugs," she said. "You're okay? There's nothing you want to talk about? Because if you do, this is the perfect chance, right now."

He whirled to face her, and for a moment there was a pained look on his face, as though she had hit some nerve deep within. But as quickly as he had whirled around, he regained his composure, and his face once took on that distant, discriminating expression. "I'm fine," he assured her. "I don't need to talk about anything like that with you, Chloe."

She wanted to believe him, she really did.

But deep down, based on his reaction, she didn't.

There was more to it than he was letting on.


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor and all original characters are mine. Thanks to everyone who has been actively reading, reviewing, and who has put this on either their favorites or alert lists!**

**Treadmill**

**Part Eight**

_Truth be told_

_My problems solved_

_You mean the world to be but you'll never know_

_You could be cruel to me_

_While we're risking the way that I see you_

_Conversations_

_Not me at all_

_I'm hesitating_

_Only to fall_

_And I'm waiting, I'm hating everyone_

-from the song "I See You" by Mika

Chloe stood in a corner of the apartment hallway, clicking her nails against her mobile nervously. Sally Donovan kept giving her surreptitious looks, but she ignored the sergeant and checked her voicemail messages for the umpteenth time.

There were three from Ralph, urging her to pick up the phone because Lucy at the Tate Galley wouldn't deal with the new agent, either. And one from Lucy herself chirpily asking Chloe to call her back. Chloe groaned aloud and checked her watch.

One o'clock.

Lucy would be at lunch.

And Chloe was behind with her editing work that was due on Friday.

She tried to catch Sherlock's eye, but it didn't work. He was too absorbed in some conversation with Lestrade to even have seen her. Or maybe he ignored her.

"So," Sally Donovan said as she glanced at Chloe, "how'd you end up dating the freak?"

"The freak?" Chloe echoed.

"Sherlock Holmes. The freak."

Chloe slid the keyboard back into her phone and sighed. "I'm not dating him."

"Really?"

"He's a friend."

"He doesn't have friends."

"Really?" Chloe mimicked. "There me and then there's Dr. Watson. That's two. And that's more than none." She wandered closer to the door of the flat, and Sherlock glanced at her and gave her an annoyed look. He finished his conversation with Lestrade and wove his way around the crime scene techs, and offered Sally an insincere smile as he walked past.

"We're going to Bart's," Sherlock told Chloe as she followed him down the hallway and to the stairway. "If you're hungry, you can get lunch in the canteen."

"And you?" she asked him. "Aren't you going to eat, too?"

He shook his head as he hailed a taxi. "No. I never eat on a case."

Not eating? Her lips quirked at this.

"I need to get home soon," she said as she climbed in beside him. "I have work I need to do. I'm getting behind."

"We'll get you home soon enough," he murmured as he closed his eyes and leaned against the back headrest. "I want to take a look at the body itself. And the bullet."

"What did Lestrade say to you about picking the victim's pocket?" Chloe asked him.

He smiled elusively. "He didn't say anything…he was very pleased that we found the flat, though a little annoyed that I withheld the evidence that I found. Don't worry, I told him that you were an unwilling accomplice just along for the ride. Though I did see that you had an exchange with Sergeant Donovan."

"Oh, that." Chloe suppressed a snort of laughter. "She doesn't like you, does she?"

"No, she doesn't."

"And why is that? Did you plan a date with her and then stand her up?"

"No." He opened his eyes and turned to her. "I deduced that she was having an affair with Anderson, which caused them both to hate me even more."

"She said you didn't have friends," Chloe pursued curiously. "I told her she was wrong. Two was more than none."

He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, as though he were pondering something, all the while not taking his eyes off of her. She thought he was on the verge of saying something.

But he turned away from her, facing the front of the cab, and he remained silent till they reached St. Bart's.

* * *

"You're lucky I'm not going to arrest you for tampering with a crime scene, breaking-and-entering, and obstructing a police investigation" Lestrade rebuked him quietly. "You're lucky I'm not arresting your little friend, either. Though there are some people who would love to see _you_ arrested for something."

"Chloe?" Sherlock frowned. "She's an unwilling accomplice. I abducted her from Westminster Abbey and relieved her from doing her father's legwork for him. But we identified your body, found where he's been staying, and some of what he was up to…which may point to a motive…"

Lestrade sighed, and his face bespoke the exhaustion and the exasperation he felt with the case and with Sherlock. "He was skimming from his supplier for his own use and trying to sell it on his own. The supplier got wind of the competition and took him out. Small-time drug dealers. We just do a little poking around, check our informants, and we'll get a lead."

Sherlock kept his face impassive. "You'll keep me posted on anything you learn, then?"

Lestrade smiled wanly. "When haven't I kept you posted on developments, Sherlock?"

Chloe was leaning in toward the doorway and trying to catch Sherlock's attention. She'd been doing that for the last half an hour and her impatience was irritating.

"You always do," Sherlock said, and he turned on his heel and left the flat.

"You'll keep me posted, won't you?" Lestrade called after him.

Sherlock ignored him, but smirked at Sally instead as Chloe followed him downstairs and outside.

He kept trying to think, but Chloe's questions…She still asked too many of them.

It came to the point that he just ignored her and she grew quiet.

She had asked him about the drugs.

He had seen the cocaine there, yes, in his hand, and maybe he would have pocketed it had Chloe not been there, but he hadn't because she was there. Instead he had put it back into the dufflebag, a strange sort of coldness settling in the pit of his stomach, and a sense of disappointment filling the part of his brain that needed stimulation during the lulls in between cases, the part of him the was desperate and craved it.

He had started experimenting with drugs in the latter years of secondary school, when he had grown bored and could easily ace the exams without even going to classes. He had tried marijuana at first, only to find that it dulled his senses and while it might make him more introspective, the epiphanies that hit him while he was under its influence were of the most inane kind. He hadn't cared for Ecstasy or any of the hallucinogenic types, but when he got to university, there were other things to be tried when he was bored.

He had first begun snorting cocaine, but then he found that ingesting it in that way left telltale signs of use, so he began to inject it, trying to find the perfect combination of cocaine so that he could attain that perfect high. And he finally found it: a seven-per-cent solution. It was so easy to hide; he knew where to inject it so that no one could see. It would depend on the weather, on the seasons, on what he wore. It filled the empty stretches of time in between the cases, so that things didn't seem so bad.

Of course he couldn't hide it from Mycroft. He couldn't hide anything from Mycroft.

He'd been twenty-eight at the time, taking cases here and there, living off of the money from his trust fund, a steady little stipend. He would sometimes go to the police stations and watch and listen for a case that they couldn't solve, or scour the papers, or listen to the news, and he set up a website. Sometimes people would approach him, and he was starting to make a name for himself. Inspector Lestrade thought that the funny young man with the manic nature and the unruly hair was an invaluable resource, and he began to keep Sherlock in the loop for certain cases that might need some help. Sherlock trusted Lestrade, but just enough. He never allowed Lestrade into his shabby flat in the East End, never allowed the D.I. to see how bad it really got when he was going mad from sloth, when he would inject that solution into his veins for relief and spend hours pacing with the ideas ricocheting throughout his head, talking at the walls, at the skull he had pinched from St. Bart's morgue, writing down and typing in the ravings.

Mycroft had found him that way once, and had only looked at him with thinned lips and a shaking head.

And three days later Inspector Lestrade had come with a warrant to search the flat for drugs. And they found the cocaine.

Mycroft, of course, had pulled strings, made it all go away, because Sherlock had never really had any _real_ brushes with the law. If he treaded the line, it was for the greater good, and most inspectors were able to turn a blind eye to Sherlock's idiosyncrasies and slight disregard for the law. It wasn't like he was selling the cocaine, anyhow, and he was only hurting himself. So it was brushed under the rug-so long as Sherlock went to rehab.

He went to rehab.

He was there for ninety days. Three months while the criminal classes seemed to cheer at his hiatus, all because of his supposed weakness.

He returned with a greater desire to throw himself into the work. Because that was the only thing that mattered. That was his reason for existing.

He knew Mycroft had arranged it so that the police would be able to get a warrant and search his apartment for drugs. Mycroft had probably even arranged for Lestrade to oversee it all, a sort of intervention, he supposed.

He wasn't sure if he was grateful to Lestrade or if he was angry with Lestrade, still. He was more grateful than angry, because in moments when he was so desperate with boredom that he was seriously tempted to go into the little hidden compartment in his dresser and take out the case and full the syringe and inject the solution that gave him respite, Lestrade would always call with something diverting. And then the craving for the cocaine would fade.

So he was clean.

Clean for now, though the means of escape was always there, waiting for him.

He'd been craving it the day Chloe had knocked and told him to keep the noise down, after the fight with the gangster from Dubai. Because he'd felt the boredom begin to set in as soon as that man left.

And then the three confident knocks on the door, the irritation in her voice as she'd told him to keep it down. John had gone on about how he'd thought the girl who lived upstairs in the loft flat was pretty and seemed pleasant, but Sherlock hadn't seen anything remotely attractive about her. Her music was annoying, her clothes were annoying, her dog was annoying, even her piquant face was annoying.

When he found out that she was reasonably clever, though, and that she craved and sought out knowledge and learning, that changed.

Maybe because when she'd knocked on his door Friday night she'd been honestly scared. Because he had seen a side of her that she tried to keep hidden away.

And because this time he hadn't been careful, because he had let her see that vulnerable part of himself that he kept hidden away. She hadn't laughed. She'd been compassionate about it.

He watched as Chloe got food for herself, noticing that she liked mashed potatoes with just plain butter and no gravy, that she took lemon in her green tea and no milk or sugar, that she liked roast beef and green beans, that she seemed to like the fruit salad made of fresh berries. Little things that he filed away, like he had with John, little parts that made up a whole of a person.

"Where are you going?" she asked him as she paid for her lunch.

"Up to the mortuary. Come join me when you're done," he said to her, shortly.

He had to get away from her. The smell of her perfume-Elizabeth Arden 5th Avenue, he concluded, the way she knitted her brows and pursed her lips when making a decision over salad or green beans ("I like Romaine, not iceberg."), the way she would roll her eyes at him when he was exasperating to her, the way she had looked at him when he had deliberated over the cocaine…

He put on his most charming face for Molly and dismissed any thoughts of Chloe from his mind. This was a case, Chloe was just along for the ride because John was working, and that was that.

But at least, he could say one thing. He found her _interesting_.

* * *

"So is he paying you to follow him around like his lapdog? What's going on?"

"No, Dad, it's not like that." Chloe reiterated, rubbing at her temple with her fingers and feeling the beginnings of a headache start to thrum in time with her pulse.

"Well, what is it, then? I looked at his blog, Clo-I don't like what I see."

"That's his friend John's blog, Dad," Chloe corrected as she sipped at the new cup of green tea she had just bought.

"Well, regardless," Ralph said as he chewed on something, "he's bad news, Clo, and I'd stay away from him if I were you."

"For God's sake, Dad, I'm twenty-eight years old, and I can make my own decisions. And stop eating when you're talking on the phone to me-it's rude." She stood up when she saw Sherlock approaching. "Look, Dad, I've got to go. I left Lucy a voicemail and she should be following up."

"Chloe, now listen…" Ralph began.

"Talk to you later-bye," she said hurriedly, and she stared at Sherlock expectantly.

"I had a look at the bullet."

"And?"

"It's from a Glock-a 17C, to be exact."

"I don't know anything about guns, Sherlock," Chloe said. "So what's the whole point?"

"You know nothing about guns?" he repeated, sounding a little astounded. "You've never watched…oh, that crime series with the forensic scientists…and the crimes and the solutions to them are completely unrealistic…"

"_CSI_?" Chloe supplied. "I hate that show."

"Good-because so do I," he answered. "Anyhow, with this type of pistol used…it's not small-time drug hustlers. It's international, and they have their own group of assassins and enforcers. At this point, Chloe, I'm going to go this alone. I work more quickly and can cover more ground."

She was a little shocked at this. He stood as straight as normal and was his usual confident-almost cocky-self. And now he was sure he could handle this alone. _Why?_

"I wouldn't let it hurt your feelings," he said quickly, almost dismissively. "I have my own reasons for it-which have nothing to do with you. You've been a great help, but I need to concentrate fully on resolving this. And don't you have a book you need to edit anyhow?"

"Yeah," she mumbled.

She wasn't understanding this at all.

"Good," he said. "Then I'll see you later in the week, I'm sure." He nodded at her brusquely and buttoned his coat, turning away from her to leave.

"Sherlock," Chloe called.

He turned to her. "Yes?"

She bit her lip and shifted uneasily. "If you need anything, call…or text."

He stared at her a moment, his brows knitted, and she thought she saw him press his lips together, but then the look came and faded so she wasn't sure. Then he pulled out his mobile and scrolled through a list, pressed some buttons, and then put it back in his pocket. "You're on my speed-dial list now. It makes it easier, if I have to text in a hurry."

"Of course," Chloe said. And she had that let-down feeling as she watched him leave.

Her conversation with Lucy proved fruitful. Ralph and his photographer would be able to go into the Tate Gallery to get the pictures they needed Friday morning.

She sent Ralph an email, telling him in no uncertain terms that she would not and could not be there that morning.

And then an email from Megan. _Dad says you have a new boyfriend. What gives?_

And then the picture was attached.

_He's cute. Why are you hiding it? What do you have to hide? Are you scared of what Mom would say?_

Chloe could seriously kill Ralph right now. She quickly typed a reply, anger boiling in her veins.

_Megan-I am not, nor am I looking, to date anyone right now. He's a friend who needed some help with a case, and I helped him. He and his flatmate have been very, very nice to me on more than one occasion and we're all just friends. I don't know what Dad is doing, nor do I care, but he needs to stop living my life and stop getting me to take care of his life so we can both live our own lives. End of story. _

Chloe even sent a link to the "Science of Deduction" website to emphasize her point.

Sherlock had stolen John's key and came into her flat at four in the morning on Thursday looking for food.

When she heard the key turn in the lock, she thought it was John coming for his food, but then when he peered into her bedroom because he'd heard her stir, she saw that it was Sherlock.

"John says you have food here," he explained, "and I'm afraid we haven't anything in at the flat…he's been at Sarah's almost all week…and it _is_ late."

Chloe groaned into her pillow. Seriously, they could be dating…they could! Because he'd be dependent on her if not on John or Mrs. Hudson to remember food or anything else _for_ him!

"There's stuff for sandwiches in the fridge," she told him. "Just clean up after yourself."

He smiled. "Thank you, Chloe. Good night."

She heard him making the sandwich, at which point Lilly jumped off the bed and went into the kitchen to beg, and then she heard him talking softly to the dog. Some minutes later she heard the sounds of the overture to _Laura_ coming from the television.

Now he was watching her DVDs!

She got out of bed and shut the bedroom door and went back to bed. She really didn't give a shit if Sherlock Holmes was up here in her flat watching her movies and eating her food. She just wanted to go back to sleep and get up in time for her conference call tomorrow at ten. With an author and that author's agent.

She woke up at seven and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. "Lilly!" she called when she was done. "Come on! Wanna go outside?"

Lilly was quite eager to go outside, and came to the bathroom door, jumping up and down as Chloe washed her face.

"Yes, Miss Lillers-yes, we're gonna go outside.," Chloe cooed. "Just let me get my coat and my shoes on and then we'll get your leash…" She stopped dead in her tracks.

Sherlock Holmes had fallen asleep, in his clothes from yesterday, on her couch.

She thought to wake him up, but then she decided against it.

It really didn't bother her. It was all actually funny and cute at the same time.

So she went about the rest of her morning while he slept.

Because after all, she thought, her couch _was _comfortable. Much more so than that leather one he had downstairs.

She was just careful to change back into her pajamas after she had showered and keep her door shut so he wouldn't see anything she didn't want him to see.

**Now I've found a perfect way to bring in Irene Adler-we'll see her next chapter and get more of an explanation of what or who "Ololon" could be. **

**Please review. I would like to see how I'm doing and am appreciative of any constructive criticism that anyone has to offer, as well as positive reviews! Thanks in advance.**


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor and all original characters are mine. Thanks to everyone who has been actively reading, reviewing, and who has put this on either their favorites or alert lists!**

**Treadmill**

**Part Nine**

_Let's paint the picture of the perfect place_

_They got it better than what anyone's told you_

_They'll be the king of hearts and you're the queen of spades_

_And we'll fight for you like we were your soldiers_

-from the song "All the Right Moves" by One Republic

"So," Molly Hooper began as Sherlock studied the bullet through the microscope in the lab, "when did you get a girlfriend?"

He lifted his head from the ocular of the microscope and glanced at Molly with a perturbed look on his face. "What do you mean…Do you mean Chloe?"

"Oh, that's her name," Molly said casually, or as casually as she could. But he could tell from the way that she wouldn't look at him that she wasn't feeling so casual about it. She had a downcast look to her, as though she were hoping against hope that he wouldn't be taken, that she would still have some kind of a chance with him.

It was probably not the nicest game to play, toying with Molly, but it was a means to an end and he was able to justify it to himself. With someone like Chloe, it wouldn't work; she had dealt with how manipulative her father could be, and working with people had helped her develop some type of built-in radar to detect when people were trying to manipulate her. But Molly didn't know; she only thought he was mercurial. And it wasn't as though his moods didn't change. Rather, it was because Molly was indispensable to him in giving him access to the mortuary when he needed it, and if she was so head over heels for him that she would let him use it whenever he wished, then he viewed it as a small evil on his part in exchange for the greater good.

"Chloe is a colleague," he told Molly quickly. "She has access to more…academic sources than I would."

Relief came over Molly's face. "Oh, I see, then," she said, her expression brightening. "So…do you want coffee?"

He smiled as gratefully as he could. "Of course," he answered. "Remember-black with two sugars?"

"Okay," Molly chirped.

He was almost relieved that she left.

He found that the bullet was from a Glock 17C. He texted this to Lestrade, who could sift through the records of known drug dealers or suppliers who enforced with these weapons.

Molly returned with the coffee, and he bagged the bullet again and had her return it to the examining room so that Anderson-useless, arrogant amateur that he was-examine it and come up with the most obvious conclusions without even looking further into what the use of such a gun and such a bullet meant.

It meant that they weren't dealing with small-timers, that they were dealing with professionals who had rubbed out a small-timer who was thinking of going into business for himself, competing with them and profiting from their business at the same time. He wanted to have his cake and eat it, too, and whoever had killed Carlson had not wanted that at all.

He finished his coffee and washed his hands, dried them, and went to put on his coat. He would need to check his resources on the streets, and that would mean legwork.

And this was where Chloe would have to bow out.

He nodded a good-bye to Molly and left the empty coffee cup on her desk, then took the lift downstairs to the main lounge where Chloe was talking on her mobile with someone. When she saw him, she hurriedly ended her conversation and stared up at him expectantly.

He was honest about it. He told her about what information he had gleaned from examining the evidence, but that he would have to go the rest of this alone. Wasn't it she who had reminded him that she had work to do and deadlines to meet?

"Sherlock," she called as he turned away from her to leave.

He sighed inwardly. He hoped that she wouldn't beg him to come along, that she would become weepy and sentimental and throw herself at him like Molly did every time he ventured into Bart's. "Yes?" he said as he turned around.

She bit her rosily glossed lips. She was mulling something over, as though there was something that she wanted to say but dared not say in a public place. "If you need anything, call…or text," she said quickly.

He was taken aback, somehow. Maybe because it seemed like she cared and she shouldn't care, and he knitted his brows and pressed his lips together at the thought. He took out his mobile and added her to his speed dial list. "You're on my speed-dial list now," he said brightly. "It makes it easier, if I have to text you in a hurry."

She nodded. "Of course," she said quietly.

He knew she was watching him as he left, but he didn't look back.

After all, the case was the most important thing on his mind right now.

* * *

At three that morning the text came.

_I hear you've gotten yourself into a bigger pickle than you thought. We need to talk._

He ran his thumb over the screen of his Blackberry. The signature, as bright and tantalizing and mocking as always.

_Irene._

Irene Adler.

Irene Adler-Norton now.

Irene. The glittering hazel eyes, the laugh like the tinkling of crystal chandelier drops, the shining chestnut hair, the extreme perceptiveness, the nature even more mercurial than his own.

_Where do you want to meet?_

_Anywhere. You name it. Later this morning, though._

He named a coffee shop around the corner from his flat. Seven A.M.

_I'll be there._

Irene showed up, dressed slickly in a designer black business suit, the diamonds from her engagement and wedding rings catching the light of the early morning sun.

"On time, like always," he remarked.

She tilted her head, a smile spreading on her face, her eyes sparkling with mirth as she took him in. "You haven't changed a bit," she said.

"You have." He ordered his customary coffee, black with two sugars. "I take it you're on the right side of the law now?"

"The American government is very generous when you have the contacts and when you know how to work a room," she replied. "And when your husband is from a _very_ influential family…" She smiled.

Godfrey Norton, C.E.O of Securinord, a private security firm like Blackwater without the mess. They didn't provide mercenaries, but only advice and contacts for the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. and God knew who else. Irene had made loads of contacts on both sides of the law after many years as a sort of con artist cum private detective, the very thing that had gotten her in trouble in Britain until Mycroft and the American government had come swooping in to bail her out.

"You cut your hair," he noted. She blinked.

"I grew my bangs out. The sideswept bang is so tired…but that new one you're hanging around with wears them quiet well. It's just that _everyone_ has them, you know?" She shrugged. "But enough about me. How about you?"

"You said you needed to talk," he said, unbuttoning his coat and taking off his gloves. He unwrapped his scarf from around his neck, and she appraised him appreciatively, and he found himself remembering those nights of hurried passion and unbridled lust with Irene in Madrid, Paris, Glasgow, Dublin, Copenhagen, even Montenegro. "What do you mean by 'getting myself into a bigger pickle than I thought'? You know something."

She sipped at her cappuccino. "Some _things_. I know some _things_."

"What _things_, Irene?" he persisted.

"You still don't eat on a case, do you?" she said incongruously, gesturing to his coffee cup. "You know, if you keep doing that, you're going to kill yourself one of these days, Sherlock. Wouldn't that make some poor girl sad?"

He gritted his teeth. "It wouldn't make any 'poor girl' sad," he growled, slumping down in the chair.

"That's too bad," Irene sighed. She regarded her manicured nails and then leaned forward all of a sudden. "The case you're working. The Carlson murder…or more like an execution."

"How would you know about that?" he riposted, his eyes narrowing.

She remained nonchalant about it. "Thank my friends at the D.E.A. and Interpol for that one, Sherlock. Lestrade keeps his lips tighter than a sealed coffin, as does all of Scotland Yard when it comes to my inquiries. So I found secondary sources that work just fine."

"What do you know about Carlson?" he asked her.

She took out her mobile and scrolled through it as she rattled off the details in a bored voice. "His crystal meth and crack suppliers were part of a bigger network. It's international…Interpol's been looking at Ireland because it's headquartered from there. Sometimes from Boston."

"Irish Mafia?"

"Maybe."

He bit his lip. This was more complicated than he had thought.

"We've been tracking down a Sebastian Moran. Know him?" Irene asked.

"I know _of_ him," Sherlock said. "Retired military, has some shadowy interests in South Africa. Some think he's involved in the smuggling of blood diamonds."

"Drugs, too," Irene added triumphantly. It had always been a game of one-upping one another with her. That was what had driven him mad about her. It had been fun at first, but then it had grown _annoying_. And soon he'd become very bored of it, but of course, Irene, being Irene, had beaten him to the punch and ended it first. And then run off with Godfrey Norton a year later to get married in the Bahamas.

"There's always drug interests with this organization," Sherlock riposted. "How is he different than anyone else?"

She swallowed. "We don't know who he works for," she confessed.

"What do you mean you don't know who he works for?" Sherlock demanded.

"There's no trail…nothing," Irene admitted. She turned away from Sherlock's intense blue gaze. "It's like he works for a ghost."

"Maybe that's because you're _looking_, but not _seeing_, not _observing_," Sherlock postulated snidely.

She glared at him. "That's not it-I tried. We tried, but there's nothing," she insisted.

"Then I'll try," he said.

She sat back in the seat and stared at him with narrowed eyes. She shook her head. "See if you can," she challenged.

He laughed. He liked the challenge. "When I find it, I'll pass the information onto you," he assured her.

"How nice of you." Irene rummaged through her purse and placed a tenner on the table-for both of their coffees. "I know you never pay when you don't have to," she purred. "Particularly when you don't have to impress anyone."

"I can return the favor next time," Sherlock said, draining his cup and smiling at Irene winsomely. He rose to leave but she placed her hand on his forearm, stopping him.

"There's more to it." she told him.

"There is?" he said incredulously.

"The letter M," she said. "It all goes back to the letter M."

M.

Moriarty?

Impossible.

Maybe Moran?

More likely Moran.

"Something's going to happen soon," Irene said cryptically. "I don't know where or when, but it's going to come crashing down, and we won't be able to stop it."

He felt his scalp prickle at this as he disengaged his arm from her grip. "Maybe not you," he said with a sneer. "But maybe me."

"Your friends, Sherlock. The doctor. The girl." Irene's eyes were wide, her voice urgent. "Watch out for them. Don't let them get in too deep."

He had nothing to say to Irene about that.

* * *

Instead, he walked away, taking out his mobile to text Lestrade with the name.

Moran was staying in Dover.

Sherlock rode in the front of a police car to help with the search and arrest.

They found the Glock 17-C. Yet despite all of the prodding in the interview room, Moran remained silent, then asked for his lawyer.

* * *

At four that morning, Sherlock returned to Baker Street to a Post-It note on the refrigerator from John that he had gone to Sarah's for the night.

There was a six-pack of beer and a bottle of hot sauce in the fridge, along with other condiments, and a pair of severed hands for one of his experiments. But no food in.

The silver key to Chloe's that John had left beside his laptop shined in the moonlight. Sherlock picked it up and hurried up the stairs. If anyone had food in and wouldn't mind being awakened, it was Chloe. Particularly if he took care of the dog when she was out of town next.

Chloe sat up in bed when he entered, and she mumbled something about things for sandwiches in the fridge as she pulled her quilt closer to her chin. He found a fully stocked fridge, including food marked with John's name in block letters with a Sharpie.

Lilly came into the kitchen to see if she could beg any scraps off of him, and he handed her a slice of roast beef and patted her head.

As he ate his sandwich and his apple and drank his water, he saw that the DVD player had been left on and that the case to the movie _Laura_ had been set upon it.

He had never seen _Laura_, but he was quite sure who had committed the murder right when the movie had started. One had only to look at how Waldo inserted himself into the investigation and tried to incriminate everyone else, but Sherlock hadn't expected the twist that Laura was still alive and another girl had been killed in her place. He might have turned it off at that point, but there was the question of what Waldo would do now that Laura was still alive and that she was starting to fall for Mark McPherson. And so he ended up watching the entire thing, glancing over at the bedroom door as Chloe shut it, and he fell asleep on the couch with the dog snoring away in the chair beside it.

He could hear Chloe moving around, and he heard her call for Lilly to go outside during the moments when he was half asleep. He felt someone drape a blanket over him, and as he fell into deep sleep, he realized that he had been quite cold before the blanket was put there.

* * *

"The point is, you can't make it into a reflexive verb," Chloe was arguing. "You can't have someone spew himself into someone else. It's not grammatically correct, and aesthetically…"

"But that's how I want to express it!" a shrill voice cried out over the speaker phone. "It's what works in the scene, and that's how I wrote it, and that's how it's going to be in the book!"

"But if you want your readers to view you as a serious writer, you have to maintain some sort of grammatical integrity, Anita," Chloe persisted, sipping at her green tea and leaning against the counter.

"Now you're being pedantic," Anita said, sounding miffed.

"Listen to her, Anita," a male voice cajoled, and Sherlock sat up to take in the absurdity of the whole scene: of Chloe, rolling her eyes and trying to be reasonable, of the agent trying to reason with his client, of the overly sensitive budding romance novelist. "She edits her dad's work, and no one ever said a Ralph Gaynor novel or bio didn't read well."

Sherlock rubbed his eyes and stretched his neck to work out any kinks in it, and he drowsily held out his hand as Lilly came up to him to be petted.

"But _my_ books aren't Ralph Gaynor books," Anita seemed to be pouting. Chloe hit the mute button on the landline phone and buried her head in her hands.

"For God's sake!" she exclaimed, stomping her foot to release her pent-up frustration. "It's always an argument with this woman-every fucking time!" She regained her composure and smiled to make her voice sound more pleasant. "Listen, Anita," Chloe said sweetly, "email what you want written back to me and give me a list of what changes you want made and what you want to keep, and I'll see what I can do. What do you think about that, Frank?"

Frank-obviously the agent-deliberated for a few beats, then addressed his client: "That sounds fair enough. A compromise. What do _you_ think, Anita?"

Anita's snuffling could be heard through the phone. "All right then-I'll send it to you by this evening," she acquiesced, and once the conversation was over with, Chloe couldn't get off of her phone fast enough.

She smiled to see Sherlock languidly stroking the dog's head. "Well," she said, "good morning, sunshine. Sleep well?"

He brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. "I slept just fine," he said.

"You were crashed-passed out," she remarked, going into the kitchen to make some coffee. "How do you take it?"

"Black-two sugars," he told her, pushing the blanket off and standing up to wander into her kitchen. He noticed that it was one of those single-serve coffeemakers that mixed the hot water with the pouches with coffee already in them. "A present?" he queried.

"From Megan and her husband. From Christmas last year. He's into all the techie kitchen stuff," Chloe explained. She went to the fridge after turning on the coffeemaker and took out an apple, butter, and milk.

"What are you doing?" he asked her. She deposited the items on the counter beside the stove and glanced at him.

"What do you think I'm doing?" she retorted as she went into one of the cupboards for oatmeal.

"You're making me breakfast," he replied, feeling a little annoyed that she was making him something without even asking him.

"You said you had hardly any food in the house, and you never eat on a case. Since you came here for a sandwich last night, I assumed you were done with the case. So now I'm making you breakfast-you need to eat and there's no way around it." She smiled at him as she measured out the ingredients. "So how was my first attempt at deduction, Sherlock?''

"Very good," he said, and he watched her as she measured out mil, butter, salt, and oatmeal and grated the apple for him, and then in a few minutes presented him with the oatmeal and the coffee. He took two teaspoons of sugar from the bowl beside the coffeemaker. "The killer has been apprehended," he told Chloe as she went to take the DVD out of the changer and put it away. She glanced back to him expectantly as she turned the radio on to an oldies station and she came over to him, her expression curious.

"So what else did you learn?" she said.

He thought to tell her, but he couldn't. He just couldn't. There were some things that it would be better-and safer-for her to remain in the dark about. "It was Irish Mafia," he lied. "Out of Boston, no less."

"Huh." She looked at him incredulously, as though she suspected he might be lying, but she wouldn't confront him on it.

"So back to the old puzzle?" she said suddenly. "Ololon?"

He chewed thoughtfully and then shrugged. He went to the kitchen table and reached for her laptop, and he went to check his email. There were many emails requesting his services, some from those who suspected their spouses of cheating, another from a company who thought that a secretary had run off with some money she had embezzled, a series of burglaries in Soho that needed attention, missing corporate documents. Things that were boring, dull, but paid the bills.

He decided that he would wait a little bit before replying, make it look as though he were a busy man, because then he would stop getting some of the more frivolous requests for services that should go to _private_ detectives and not _consulting _detectives like himself.

But he still couldn't abide the idle hours and the boredom that would creep in.

He glanced at Chloe, dressed in flared indigo jeans and a simple purple V-neck top with ruffled embellishment around the collar and a black lace-trimmed camisole underneath, pretty much dressed up and ready to go someplace.

"Do you have plans for the day?" he asked her, and though she hesitated, her face brightened and she tilted her head.

"Just waiting on the lovely Anita Silver to send over her manuscript so I can take it apart and rehash it. Other than that, nothing really." She pressed her lips together and then smiled crookedly. "What are you suggesting we do?"

He gulped down the rest of his coffee. "The Tower and then a late lunch?"

She frowned. "I need to be home…Anita will be emailing her book…" she mustered.

"She can wait," he interrupted. Chloe stared at him incredulously, and then a slow grin spread across her face.

"She can." She finished her green tea and came to the kitchen table, and she took the laptop from him and opened another window. "And a London murder walk?" she said, turning the screen toward him.

For a minute, he thought it might be boring; he had done many of the murder walks on his own based on the knowledge he had accumulated, but maybe with Chloe there, it might not be so boring.

"Do you want to leave in an hour?" she ventured shyly.

"Meet me downstairs," he said to her, and she laughed, her eyes sparkling.

"One hour," she repeated, clearing his now empty bowl and cup and going to the sink to wash them.

_Keep me posted if Moran decides to talk. SH._

Lestrade replied promptly. _Will let you know. So far, nothing. But we found calls connecting and emails connecting him and someone else to Carlson. CCTV shows him in the area._

_Thanks._

He went to quickly shower, shave, and dress.

He couldn't help but think of it again. _Ololon._

The feminine half of Milton in Blake's eponymous poem.

Feminine half…

But he didn't _have_ a feminine half.

Unless…

No, it wasn't Chloe. But…

He could have kicked himself for being so stupid as he walked from the bathroom to the living room, where he kept his laptop. He sent the email to whoever it was who had sent him the Milton quotes as a sort of puzzle.

_I__ know who Ololon is._

No response.

He rose to finish getting ready. He would spend the day with Chloe, give the puzzle maker some time to respond.

And after that…

After that, the game would be on.

He finished dressing and went downstairs. Chloe came out of Mrs. Hudson's flat after most likely letting her have Lilly for the day. He saw that Chloe had done her makeup, emphasizing her eyes with a pearl-colored and a silvery lavender eyeshadow. Strange, he thought-he had registered that she used those colors on her eyes, but had never really taken the time to look at how the combination made her eyes look to be a deeper blue than they already were.

But the way she was looking at him, the way the smile lit up her face when she saw him, and the way she buttoned up her peacoat when she asked him, "Ready to go?"

Chloe Gaynor was a beautiful woman.

"Of course," he said, and he opened the door for her and caught a whiff of that same perfume as before as she walked past, and he noticed how the wintry sun caught the reddish lights in her mahogany brown hair.

But the black sunglasses with the small rhinestone embellishments on the sides were ridiculous.

But somehow, he felt that telling her that would ruin what promised to be a very nice, very stimulating day.

And to keep his brain working and in tune, he spared her the criticism.

**Author's Note: Please review to tell me how I'm doing! Sherlock is very gradually becoming attracted to Chloe. I'll try to have more interactions between Chloe and John and her own family and friends within the next few chapters. And I hope I set up a good entrance for Irene Adler-Norton! The next few chapters take place the week **_**before**_** Sherlock goes to Belarus to look into the offer of the case at the beginning of "The Great Game." So maybe about four to six more chapters until this baby is done, all! And I hope you noticed the Sebastian Moran reference. Because if you did, you deserve some Godiva chocolates and some Riesling!**


	10. Chapter 10

**Treadmill**

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor and all original characters are mine. Thanks to everyone who has been actively reading, reviewing, and who has put this on either their favorites or alert lists!**

**Part Ten**

_Some people talk about ya _

_Like they know all about ya _

_When you get down they doubt ya _

_And when you dip it on the scene _

_Yeah they talkin' bout it _

_Cause they can't dip on the scene _

_Whatcha talk about it _

-from the song "Tightrope" by Janelle Monae

She figured out which cologne he was wearing.

Ralph Lauren Romance.

She found it to be ironic, that someone as seemingly immune to more sentimental feelings as Sherlock Holmes seemed to be would be wearing a cologne with that name.

Chloe had always had what she termed to be a weakness for men who were decent-looking, but mostly who dressed well and smelled good. Maybe it was her American penchant for cleanliness that attracted her to a sort of tidiness in a man, though in Sherlock's case, the neatness of his appearance did not extend to his living quarters.

"You're staring, Chloe," he murmured. "Why are you staring?"

She glared down at her jeans "I wasn't staring at you."

He shook his head. "Liar," he said to her.

She wouldn't look at him.

"You don't need to conceal anything, Chloe, because I can always see through it. I can always tell when people are hiding things," he told her sharply.

"Can you?" she said, turning her head to face him.

His face remained impassive. "Problem?"

"No."

"You do have a problem." He adjusted his position in the seat. "It's what you'd call a staring problem."

Chloe was flustered all of a sudden. Why did he have to _do_ that? Why did he always have to not only _see_ everything, but also tell you that he saw it?

And being flustered made her angry with him.

"Maybe I like your coat," she blurted combatively. "Maybe you look nice in it, and I just noticed it."

He snickered. "So you're a connoisseur of coats?'

She turned away from him. "Yeah-whatever you say, Sherlock."

And all of a sudden she hated it, that he was such an idiot when it came to how people felt and how people might feel about _him_. And yet he seemed to know how so many women and men looked at him; he could see it written all over their faces. And he used it to his advantage.

And she hated that he wasn't interested in women or anything remotely close to it.

Did she hate that he wasn't interested in her?

She scowled at this idea.

"Chloe," he said, his voice soft and maybe a little kind, "I don't date."

"You don't date women? You like guys?" Chloe shrugged. "Fair enough."

"No, Chloe-neither. At all."

"Well, I'm not interested in dating anyone right now, either," she forced out. "I just got out of a relationship."

"A few months ago."

"Well, I just got out of a relationship," she went on. "I was with Nathan for two years. He wanted to control me, so I told him bye."

"He wanted you to move in with him?" Sherlock pursued.

"And stop traveling with my dad. And do this and do that. It wasn't what I wanted…so I told him bye and gave him a paper bag so he could take his stuff with him."

"At three in the morning."

"I live my life on my terms, Sherlock."

"Then what do you want, Chloe?" he asked her.

She stared at him, her eyes narrowing a little bit. He was asking her what she wanted…and she couldn't say anything. Just a look from those steely blue eyes and her mind went blank.

She had never been like this before.

Ever.

"I just want someone who respects me," she said at length. "I want someone who respects me and takes me seriously. I mean, I'm not stupid. I've been talked to like I'm stupid all my life and I hate it. When you're a young woman, and you walk into the office or anywhere, and some guy thinks you're cute and that's _all_ he thinks, it sucks. Because he'll talk down to you like you're stupid-and some women will, too. My dad doesn't treat me like I'm dumb, but you heard Anita when I was trying to reason with her…And then when you try to be assertive, you're not assertive like a guy would be. You're a bitch."

Sherlock cleared his throat. "I've never talked to you like you're stupid."

She snorted. "Oh, please, Sherlock-you've talked to everyone at one time like they're stupid. At least with you it's an equal-opportunity thing."

"Well," he said, "at least you can say that I respect you and take you seriously…for the most part."

"I can," she agreed.

He was remarkably patient in the Tower, reading over the signs under the certain displays and remaining at her side as she might take a little longer over something. She found herself interested in the armory; seeing the suits of armor made for people like Henry VIII and Robert Dudley made everything more realistic for her, like she was viewing a photograph of them or something.

And after, he bought her lunch.

It was just a sandwich shop, but he promised her that they had good sandwiches and fish and chips. And they did have good fish and chips. She loved greasy food when it was cold out like this, and he was being nice. Actually being nice. Not that he hadn't been nice before, but that was because they had been working together and he'd needed her, technically.

He didn't eat like he was starving, but mechanically, like it was something that he needed to do in order to keep going. He looked at her askance as she put tartar sauce on her fish and malt vinegar on her chips, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he sipped at his mineral water and, smiling, asked her, "So who do you think did it?"

"Did what?" she said, wiping her mouth after she was finished chewing her bite of fried fish..

"The princes in the tower. Who do you think killed them?" he elaborated.

"I thought history was something you considered to be dull and unimportant. Per the blog," she added.

"Not all history. Especially when the person I'm discussing it with is someone who can _make_ it interesting." He drummed his fingers on the table. "So who did it?"

"Well, you have to look at who would benefit the most from it," Chloe said. "So the three suspects are always Henry Tudor, the Duke of Buckingham, and Richard III himself."

"So you _have _done investigations before!" he laughed. "But from the comfort of a library or the couch at home, with a mug of hot chocolate and your dog warming your feet?"

"Research _is _investigating, Sherlock," Chloe reminded him cheekily. "Just because I don't go running around London after this and that at all hours of the day or night doesn't make the things I do for my dad any less important."

"Yes-your _father_ wrote a book," Sherlock remembered. "Who did he say did it?"

"Richard III." She smiled. "He always thought so. Or someone close to him and he knew about it. When Elizabeth Woodville was plotting with Margaret Beaufort and negotiating to marry Elizabeth of York to Henry Tudor, she must have already believed her sons to be dead-and probably because they were. So why would Henry have done it…and when? He could have swooped in, saved the princes and still married Elizabeth of York and had a good position while not being king. No motive."

He smiled back. "You see? You just put it in a way for it to interest me. You have one of the books on it, don't you?"

"_The Princes in the Tower_, by Alison Weir, free to borrow at any time," she said. "But it's all marked to heck. Thomas More's and Erasmus's writings on it are interesting, too, but I prefer Weir…even above my dad's version."

"I'll borrow it some time," he promised. He shifted in his chair and his knee brushed across hers, and he cleared his throat at that, maybe a little embarrassed, but then he regained his normally composed demeanor and took out his mobile to check his email and then his voicemail. He frowned.

"What is it?" she asked him.

"My brother. He wants us to meet him for dinner. And he says that you're perfectly welcome. I wonder what he wants now," Sherlock mumbled.

"He doesn't text you?"

"He never texts. He likes to hear himself talk and see how many words he can use to string together a coherent idea."

Chloe remembered Mycroft Holmes. He was somewhat older than Sherlock, and his hair was already beginning to thin and he was developing a slight paunch at his middle. There was a strange coldness to him, too, though he was more conscious of how others might perceive him than Sherlock was. He'd come up to Chloe's flat after her ballet class, right after his brother had just moved in downstairs. He'd asked Chloe to keep an eye on his brother for him, at which point Chloe had laughed at him and replied, "That's what Mrs. Hudson does. I have my own life to live. I don't have time to spy on your weirdo brother for you."

If Mycroft was another one who thought that Chloe and Sherlock were a couple, then he was dead wrong.

"So," Sherlock said abruptly, springing up, "Jack the Ripper walk?"

She nodded.

"You'll need to stay close, so I can whisper to you about how wrong the guide is in his theories," Sherlock said to her as she buttoned her coat. "I was booted from a walk once because I told the guide that he was mistaken, and then proceeded to explain who the real killer was. I'll try to save you the embarrassment."

He did save her the embarrassment.

He would lean down to whisper in her ear what he believed had happened, that Elizabeth Stride was most likely the victim of another killer and not Jack. That the killer wasn't likely a gentleman at all, but someone who lived and worked in the area and might have somehow been acquainted with some of the murder victims. He stayed just close enough, and she found herself thrilling when he would briefly touch her forearm or shoulder excitedly and begin to tell her his version of what may have happened, his eyes taking on that spark and his face lighting up like a child's.

She wondered if it was this way for John, too, how easy it was to be pulled in, how it was all so fun because it challenged her to think like Sherlock did and to try to see what he saw. Because she couldn't, not all of it, not until after he would point it out. And she liked being able to put it all together into a clear picture, to say to herself _Now I understand_ and to be in that moment when they shared some commonality, when everything was so clear to both of them, because then that moment would pass as quickly as it had come.

And this was what made a friendship with Sherlock Holmes so worth it.

* * *

Jim wasn't sure which one. The doctor or the girl. The friend who was just a friend or the friend who could be something more.

The doctor wasn't the issue, though.

It was the girl.

He didn't think that she would be as into Sherlock's whole game as John Watson was, but he had been proven wrong. Because Sherlock had solved the puzzle.

Not that the girl was another Irene Adler. No one could be. But the girl was clever enough; some thought that she had written some of the parts of two of Ralph Gaynor's nonfiction books. Ralph had been in the hospital with a nervous breakdown during the times both deadlines were looming for the book to be submitted to the publisher, and his daughter was the one who had full access to the notes and everything. So Sherlock Holmes had found someone else to bounce ideas off of, Jim reasoned, someone who was willing to bounce back.

Jim sipped at his beer in the Ten Bells pub and watched them on the Ripper walk. It was they stood close to each other in a fashion that was both companionable and intimate, the way Sherlock was gesticulating and the way the girl was laughing. The way she looked up at Sherlock when he spoke, like he was the only thing that mattered…

It ground Jim's nerves.

The girl was no Irene Adler, he thought to himself again. Irene projected outward confidence and it was quite known that she had nerves of steel. This one, while she might project the aura of confidence and being secure within herself, had some vulnerability under that veneer. And Jim had only to crack it, just a little bit, and the core would be there, soft and tender and weak, and then he could crush. Crush it to little bits and scatter it to the four corners of the earth only to make Sherlock Holmes begin to crack.

And crack Sherlock Holmes would.

He took a really good look at the girl again. She had a terrible habit of pursing her lips, making herself look like a duck.

Ducks liked water.

Water.

He could see it, the mahogany brown hair caressed like seaweed under the current, the deep blue eyes wide and staring into oblivion, the arms spread as though she were floating, the lips pale and blue and ever so slightly parted, and the flowers in her hair and the bouquet in her arms…

The funereal bouquet.

Sherlock Holmes kept prying.

Sherlock Holmes would not stop prying. Prying was like breathing to him.

So Sherlock Holmes must learn.

It would start with the woman. The first in the circle.

It would be a grand finale, like the last burst of light and colors at a fireworks display.

It would be forever seared into Sherlock's memory, so that when he closed his eyes to sleep at night he would see it as though the picture had been sewn to his eyelids. So that he would see it every waking moment and never forget. _Never forget._

That when you pried too much you could get yourself into trouble.

And that when you got yourself into trouble, everyone else around you-particularly those you loved and cared about-could get into trouble, too.

The woman floating, just so slightly under the water, as though she had been drowned. But she wouldn't have been drowned.

It was a lovely picture. One that he, Jim Moriarty, could remember and appreciate. Because he would have been its creator.

And it would be all the more beautiful because he knew that Sherlock Holmnes would never forget it.

**So the action is finally starting to pick up…and this story is almost done! Of course, I'm playing around with Moriarty's plans a little bit, because it makes for a good story, though I'm not going to detract from the actual storyline of The Great Game. Yes, something is going to happen to Chloe, but it will figure into the periphery of everything. I think Jim would canvass a little bit just to get a better idea of the people in Sherlock's life other than John. He's so unassuming and subtle that Sherlock didn't pick up on him till later in the episode, so these are just more "lost opportunities" for Sherlock. Chloe will be figuring into the periphery of The Great Game doing legwork and trying to solve another literary riddle that Moriarty will give to Sherlock while Sherlock and John focus on the cases Moriarty gives them, so much of the communication would be via phone, text, or email. Of course, this does get Chloe in trouble…**

**So please review and try and guess what the literary allusions above mean. Hint: It's a very famous painting of a well-known character, and the model was a very famous muse linked to a very famous poet and who very tragically took her own life. Virtual raspberry cheesecake to anyone who gets it!**


	11. Chapter 11

**Treadmill**

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor and all original characters are mine. Thanks to everyone who has been actively reading, reviewing, and who has put this on either their favorites or alert lists!**

**Part Eleven**

_Stop there and let me correct it_

_I wanna live my life from a new perspective_

_You'll come along because I love your face _

_And I'll admire your expensive taste_

_And who cares divine intervention_

_I wanna be praised from a new perspective_

-from the song "New Perspective" by Panic! at the Disco

Chloe listened. Chloe was fascinated. She laughed when Sherlock called the guide an insipid fool and hid her giggles behind her hand as he continued his barrage of quiet insults.

At the site of the Kelly murder, she shivered, and unconsciously she leaned into him. She realized what she was doing and straightened suddenly, startled, and she glanced back at him with embarrassment coloring her cheeks as she mumbled an apology.

He'd liked it when Chloe had leaned into him, maybe because in that moment she'd let herself be vulnerable when she normally tried to seem independent and confident.

And she'd shivered because it had frightened her, he realized. She wasn't much older than Mary Kelly had been, she lived alone, and if someone really wanted to…

She shuddered again as the tour ended. Sherlock took out his mobile to see a text from his brother.

So Mycroft was texting now, was he?

"How do you feel about pasta?" he asked Chloe presently.

"W-w-what?" she chattered.

"Do you want pasta for dinner?" he elaborated, and when he looked up at her, he saw that she had wrapped her arms around herself, as though she were trying to protect herself from the cold. He hailed a taxi and let her climb in first.

"Pasta?" she said. "That sounds so good…."

"And wine," he added.

That reeled her in.

"Wine would be great," she said. She took out her own mobile to check her email. "Anita hasn't sent her manuscript yet. She must think I'm waiting around for it." She glanced at Sherlock.

"She's thinking wrong, isn't she?" he said, and she let out a snort of laughter as she put her mobile back in her purse.

"She can think whatever she wants," she said. "I'm having fun."

"You are?" he said. "You didn't seem to be having too much fun a moment ago during the tour. The Kelly murder site. You seemed frightened."

She wrapped her arms around herself again. "When I was in high school I decided I had to read a book about it. Curiosity, I guess. I loved reading true crime books-Ann Rule, all that. I loved reading all the Victorian mystery stories and sensation novels, too. So I thought, why not read about Jack the Ripper?"

"So you read about him?" Sherlock kept his voice quiet. "It was the crime scene photos, wasn't it? The Kelly murder in particular? That's always the one that seems to bother people."

She nodded. "Did it bother you?" she asked him.

He decided to be honest with her. "No, it didn't. I found that I saw much more into the murderer's mind in those photos and those of the Eddowes murder than any other photo."

"Of course it wouldn't bother you," Chloe said definitively. "You view it as a puzzle."

Somehow that struck a chord in him, and he didn't understand why. "Chloe," he said, "it was over a hundred years ago. It was a case study for me."

"But a woman still died," she persisted.

"Don't you think that trying to figure out who he was-without being absurd about it-might help close the cold case?"

"She was three months pregnant, Sherlock."

Chloe was staring out the window now, and he felt his breath catch.

Normally, he didn't care what anyone might think about something like that. But Chloe…

He cared about what Chloe thought.

He didn't know why, but he did.

"I think," he said cautiously, "it was George Hutchinson."

"Who?"

"The last man who saw her alive." Sherlock inhaled deeply. "I think it was him. The way she was mutilated…and his story…and then Catherine Eddowes…"

"The way she was mutilated…" Chloe shuddered again and stared out the window of the taxi. "He knew them."

He moved closer to her. He put his arm around her. She started at the sudden movement. "You're cold," he explained succinctly.

She relaxed and leaned into him. He felt the softness of her hair as it brushed underneath his chin, and the melange of a rather cloying shampoo, conditioner, volumnizer, mousse, and spray wax assailed his nostrils. And of course the perfume, the simple, sweet floral.

"You smell so good," she murmured. He felt her settle, and she rested one of her hands on his other arm.

This was supposed to be platonic, wasn't it?

He didn't want to push her away, because there was something so natural about it. Human beings were social creatures, human beings needed touch. They needed companionship. Maybe that was left over from the days of evolution, when they had to stay in groups to survive and protect themselves from predators. Sherlock had believed himself to be an exception to that rule, an oddity, but then had come Lestrade and then John and then Chloe.

He hadn't built a safety net. In a way, it had been built for him.

But during that cab ride, in those few minutes, something rare happened.

Sherlock Holmes's mind quieted, just so he could live that moment.

* * *

She disengaged herself from him when the cab stopped in front of Angelo's. Sherlock beat her to paying the fare.

Mycroft was there already, seated in a booth toward the back, where it was more private. He had already ordered a bottle of the house white and was perusing the menu when Sherlock and Chloe sat down. Sherlock didn't bother with the formalities; Chloe and Mycroft had already met, and he didn't want to do anything to make Mycroft think that there was more going on than a simple platonic friendship.

Mycroft put down the menu and regarded Sherlock with a stern face. "So you're punctual, I see. Did you two enjoy your day out?"

Sherlock remained impassive. Why was it that Mycroft was always trying to get under his skin? "And you were early. You were watching us on the CCTVs. Do you think we had a good day out?"

Chloe's jaw went slack, and she exclaimed, _"He did what?"_

Mycroft's lips twitched in amusement. "Oh, come now, _Chloe_, it's not as though I were following you. My brother is one those people who needs to be watched. Watching you was only incidental."

"Regardless," Chloe snapped out, "you just went and violated my privacy-not only mine, but _his_." She jabbed a finger in the air toward Sherlock to emphasize her point.

"I'm used to it by now, Chloe," Sherlock said cuttingly. "Mycroft has to sit in a stuffy office all day. He uses the CCTV to follow me and lives vicariously through it. He can't get out much-his work, you see."

Mycroft's lips thinned, and Sherlock chuckled. The barb had worked, but Chloe still wasn't relaxed.

"You," she hissed to Mycroft, "are sick."

Mycroft's brow furrowed into a glare.

Now this was getting old.

"Calm down, Chloe," Sherlock said. "Have some wine." He reached for her glass and poured it for her. "See what you'd like from the menu. Mycroft is paying." He smiled maliciously at his brother. "The manicotti is excellent here, though Mycroft must content himself with the capellini Pomodoro. His diet, you see."

"Manicotti sounds great," Chloe said. "How about an antipasto, too?"

"An antipasto salad, then?" Mycroft said to Chloe as civilly as he could.

Chloe looked up, her eyes sparkling. "Oh, my god-a man after my own heart!"

Chloe loved food, Sherlock realized. Not just to eat to satisfy a need, but the actual tastes and how this went with that or how cooking something differently could affect whether or not she liked it. It was something that Sherlock found to be dull and a waste of time, but it was something that his brother enjoyed, too. And maybe that was why Sherlock regarded as just a simple need, something that slowed him down when he was on cases. Because it was so important to Mycroft, maybe…

"Where's the bathroom?" Chloe piped up suddenly.

Sherlock indicated the bathroom, and Chloe smiled and picked up her purse and left the table. Mycroft took his chance and leaned forward.

"She's very pretty," he commented. "But Americans can be so pushy, though, can't they?"

"She's not my girlfriend," Sherlock told Mycroft quickly as he picked at his salad.

"I never thought she was," Mycroft laughed. "But she's very pretty. It really _is _too bad…"

_Too bad that you're married to your work and you don't take time out for normal things. _The same thing from Mycroft. Over and over and over again…

"Why did you ask us here, Mycroft?" Sherlock asked sharply. "It's for something other than paying for my and Chloe's dinner, isn't it?"

"Well, done, little brother-I'll give you that much!" Mycroft took out his mobile and went into his email. "I'm sending something to you regarding a case. It's from the Consulate, and they contacted me. I decided to hand it over to you to see what you could make of it."

Sherlock pressed his lips together. "I'm busy," he lied sharply. "I have other cases, Mycroft."

Mycroft paused, rolling his brown eyes up at Sherlock discerningly. "Oh, of course you have other cases," Mycroft said incredulously. "You're so busy with them that you have time to run around London with Miss Gaynor, visiting the Tower and going on Jack the Ripper tours." He leaned forward. "At least look at the case, Sherlock. I'm not asking you to take it. If you do take it, the Consulate is willing to pay for your trip out there, and I can secure a very hefty sum from them for your trouble. So what do you say?"

Sherlock gritted his teeth as they watched Chloe emerge from the bathroom and hurry back to her seat beside him.

"More wine?" Mycroft offered, and Chloe held out her half-empty glass.

"More, please!" she said laughingly.

Sherlock bit the insides of his cheeks. "I'll take the case, Mycroft."

Mycroft smiled triumphantly as Chloe asked him, "What case?"

"Oh, just a little something the Consulate found for him."

"The Consulate?" Chloe persisted between bites. "Which Consulate, Sherlock?"

"The British Consulate, Chloe," Sherlock replied.

"One of our own has gotten himself into a little bit of trouble in Belarus…Minsk, to be exact," Mycroft explained to Chloe as he carefully avoided taking the salami and ham from the antipasto.

"Oh, wow," Chloe said. "There's a lot of history there, particularly from the Communist era. I'd love to be able to go…"

"Why not go, Chloe, since Dr. Watson is busy?" Mycroft persuaded, his eyes twinkling at Sherlock mercilessly. "I'm sure my brother could use an assistant. Couldn't you, Sherlock?"

"Mycroft," Sherlock warned.

Chloe glanced between the two of them, then her eyes lit up as her manicotti was set in front of her. "I'm sorry, but I can't," she told Mycroft as she tucked into her meal enthusiastically. "I have deadlines. Please pass the Parmesan, Sherlock."

Sherlock passed her the Parmesan, and tossed a triumphant look at his brother.

* * *

"Your brother is ridiculous," Chloe slurred as she got out of the taxi in front of Baker Street. "I don't want to go to Minsk. Doesn't he know how fucking cold it is this time of year?"

"Up the stoop," Sherlock indicated, and carefully she managed the steps as he unlocked the door.

After the spat with Mycroft had ended, Sherlock had watched as Chloe ingested five glasses of wine and metamorphosed from a confident, mature young woman to a giggly, tipsy girl. She had said to Mycroft, "I'm _so sorry_ you can't have tiramisu because of your diet. Because this tiramisu is _so good_."

She had leaned on Sherlock's arm and gotten into the cab, chattering all the way back home about everything and nothing. She had pronounced that she loved his scarf and that she was going to get one just like it, and that when they were with each other next, they could be scarf twins. "And then if John gets one, you can be scarf twins, too! And then we could be _scarf triplets_!"

"Why do you say my brother is ridiculous?" he asked her as he helped her up the stairs to her flat.

"He just is," Chloe said. "Do you know what he told me when you went to answer that text? He told me that you were a high-functioning sociopath and that I should be careful."

"What did you say to him?" Sherlock asked as she pawed through her purse to find her key.

"I told him I was a high-functioning neurotic." She stomped her foot. "My key! Where is it?" She knelt down on the floor and brushed her bangs out of her eyes, then set to digging through her purse again. Then with a grunt of frustration, she proceeded to dump the contents of her purse on the floor. "Help me find it!" she whined.

He sighed audibly and rolled his eyes, then spotted the key and picked it up, handing it to her. She smiled up at him thankfully, and she gathered up the rest of her things and stuffed them back into her purse. Sherlock made sure that nothing had been neglected, then helped her up so that she could unlock and open her door.

"I'm sorry I got so drunk," she apologized.

"There's nothing to be sorry about," he mumbled. She tripped into her flat and plopped down on the couch, taking off her boots.

She then stood up and went into the kitchen for some ice water, and she approached Sherlock and placed her hand on his cheek. She stared up at him with the exaggerated, intense expression that only the very drunk could pull off.

"If you are a sociopath, I'm still your friend," she said. "I like you. I have fun with you. And that's what counts, right?"

"Right," he said, and he brushed her hand away from his cheek. "You'll be all right, Chloe. I'm going downstairs."

And then something happened that took him completely off guard.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him.

"Good night! Sleep tight! Don't let the bedbugs bite!" she chirped. And she disengaged herself and went into the bathroom to wash her face.

"Good night, Chloe," he called back, and he went downstairs as quickly as he could.

* * *

She had a terrible headache when she woke up in the morning to the smell of tea being made. She could hear Lilly's nails as they clicked on the floor in the kitchen and heard John mumble something in reponse to some report on the news.

She got up and went into the bathroom to at least brush her teeth. Lilly bounded up to her and she scratched the dog's head before closing the door to use the toilet.

After she washed her hands, she emerged to see that John had made himself quite at home eating scrambled eggs and toast while flipping through the channels on the television.

"Good morning, slugabed," he called as she went for some coffee and went into the cupboard for her vanilla-flavored powered creamer.

"Not working this morning?" she asked him.

"Afternoon shift all week," he said.

"Oh." She picked up her laptop and went to check her email. The manuscript was there. Chloe groaned and scrubbed her hand over her eyes. She had a headache from the wine. This wasn't going to bode well for her today.

"Sherlock said he spent the day with you yesterday," John mentioned.

"Yeah, he did," she said.

"That's good…for him, I mean. That he got out." John was watching her, she noticed. "He genuinely likes you, Chloe. He doesn't genuinely like many people."

"Fabulous," she said. "I'm glad to know I'm on his list of people he allows himself to like. Is it a very long list, John?"

"Chloe, you know that is isn't."

"Hm." She folded her legs under her and stared out the window at the gloomy gray sky outside. The words had stuck with her.

_Did Sherlock tell you that he's a high-functioning sociopath? They can be quite dangerous._

She sipped at her coffee. "John."

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"Anything." John turned down the volume on the television and turned to her, fully focusing his attention on her.

"Is Sherlock really a high-functioning sociopath?" she forced out. John's eyes flicked away from hers.

"He says he is." John shifted his position in the chair.

"Do you think he is?" she persisted.

John shrugged. "I don't know. There are times when he seems like he really is, but then there are times when I've seen differently. Who told you that he was?"

"Mycroft." She laughed ruefully. "So I told him I was a high-functioning neurotic."

John's expression remained curious. "Chloe, you're not…He hasn't…There's nothing going on between you two, is there?"

She shook her head, chewing on her fingernail. "No. Nothing like that. And when we came in last night I was drunk and he was a perfect gentleman. But the thing is, John, I like him. A lot. I feel like I can totally be myself with him and that's okay. Because he can do the same thing with me."

"What do you mean by 'like him,' Chloe?" John asked, a puzzled expression on his face. "Is it as a friend or as something more?"

She turned this over in her mind. She wasn't sure. Because somehow she got the feeling that even if she had romantic feelings for Sherlock Holmes, he would never return them. He wasn't someone who thought those things were important.

_I don't date. At all._

_I'm married to my work._

"I don't know," she told John honestly as she got up to go into her bedroom to get ready to take a shower. "I honestly don't know."

* * *

She found places for him to visit and made a list of them, along with their schedules, depending on what he had time for. She printed it out by two in the afternoon and went downstairs. From the sound of the violin playing, she could tell he was home, and she knocked on the door. "Come in, Chloe!" he called.

She opened the door and he stood up as she entered. "How did you know it was me?"

"From the way your footsteps sound as you're coming downstairs." He put down the violin and went to the kitchen table to turn on the Bunsen burner and set a beaker over it.

"Experiment?" she asked him.

"I'm trying to see how long it takes for the skin, muscle, and tissue to boil off of a finger at boiling point."

"One hundred degrees Celsius?" she queried.

"No." He went to the refrigerator and pulled a container out, and from it he extracted a human finger. "Ninety-nine point ninety-seven degrees Celsius."

Chloe felt the color drain from her face. _"Is that a human finger?"_ she exclaimed, horrified.

"From the mortuary off of a cadaver. Don't worry…the woman it belonged to donated her body to science." He dropped the finger in and set the stopwatch to countdown. "Now we wait."

"This is disgusting."

"I didn't say you had to wait with me," he said loftily. "You needed something?"

She remained in the living room. She set the information she had typed up for him on the coffee table. "When do you leave for Belarus?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"I made you an itinerary, in case you have time to visit some of the spots there," she mustered.

He sighed audibly and whirled to face her. "Chloe, I'm going to Belarus to work. What makes you think I'm going to have time to see the sights when I'm there to look into whether or not a man was falsely accused of stabbing his wife to death?"

He wasn't glaring at her, but he seemed truly exasperated, as though she were interrupting something. As though she had intruded. Chloe bit her lip and blinked back her tears, and then she grew angry. What right had he to talk to her like that? Weren't they supposed to be friends?

"Problem, Chloe?" he asked her, looking up from his experiment.

"Hell, yeah, there's a problem," she spat out. "I just tried to do something nice for you and you just acted like a complete asshole about it."

He turned back to his chemistry set. "Chloe, I have an experiment to finish."

She was shocked. How could he just turn away like that when he had upset her and she was trying to tell him about it? Did he just decide to turn his emotions on and off at will, or did he even have any at all?

Chloe didn't know. And in a way, she didn't want to know.

She strode over to the table and picked up the paper. As he watched her, she picked it up and tore it into tiny pieces. She threw the pieces up into the air, and they scatteresd and landed throughout the room, like indifferent snowflakes.

"Chloe," he said, "what was that about?'

She glared at him, shaking her head, pressing her lips together. "Use your brain, since everything else is there for _transport_ or whatever you call it. Then you'll figure it out."

She turned to leave, and he took a step toward her. "Chloe!"

She stopped, then faced him again. "I hope you die of boredom in Minsk," she said. "See if I care."

And she walked out the door and didn't look back.


	12. Chapter 12

**Treadmill**

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor and all original characters are mine. Thanks to everyone who has been actively reading, reviewing, and who has put this on either their favorites or alert lists!**

**Part Twelve**

_And when it rains,_

_You always find an escape_

_Just running away,_

_From all of the ones who love you,_

_From made yourself a bed_

_At the bottom of the blackest hole _

_And you'll sleep 'til May_

_And you'll say that you don't not see the sun anymore_

-from the song "When It Rains" by Paramore

He left for the airport early in the morning. He didn't try to come up to talk to her.

His absence was a welcome thing.

She went out with friends to a new, recently opened brasserie on Saturday night. Kate, one of the first friends she had made in England, whom she had met as a copy editor at Danvers and Clausen and who now worked for a nonprofit. Hilary, a receptionist-turned-executive-assistant. Laura, who had just had a baby last year and who had left the workforce to become a stay-at-home mother.

She didn't think she would see Nathan there, with a new girlfriend.

"You look good, Chloe," Nathan said as he walked by their table. "Did I introduce Amanda?"

Amanda was an awkward thing, supermodel tall and supermodel thin, with supermodel blonde hair and supermodel capped, bleached teeth and a spray tan. "Hello," Amanda said. "You're the ex-girlfriend, I take it?"

"Yeah," Chloe said, feeling a little uncomfortable, yet remembering why she had dumped Nathan in the first place.

"Well, thanks," Amanda said, laying her hand on Nathan's forearm. "I got myself a good guy here because of you."

Nathan laughed uncomfortably. Laura and Hilary went to the bathroom with Amanda following.

"Well," Nathan said, "_that _was a tense moment. Sorry."

Kate cleared her throat. "I'm going to get a bottle of Pinot Noir. You in?" she asked Chloe.

Chloe have her some cash. "Here."

"Thanks." Kate flashed a withering glance at Nathan and went to the bar.

"Well." Nathan sipped at his martini, sitting across from Chloe. "She doesn't like me."

"Kate never liked you," Chloe told him curtly. "And for good reason."

"Come on, Clo, you were the one who ended it. It wasn't as though I was asking for the moon," Nathan pointed out, his green eyes almost sad.

"You were asking me to change my whole life around just for you, Nathan. To me, that _is_ asking for the moon," Chloe said quietly.

"There are still times," Nathan said, "when I miss you, Clo. I did love you."

Chloe's eyes flicked away. "Of course you did."

"Amanda isn't like you." He swallowed. "No one could be."

"But she's what you want." And she plucked up the courage to lie. "And I've found what I want. He's out of town on business. He likes me just for who I am and it doesn't matter to him."

"Do I know him?"

She shifted uneasily. "Maybe."

"What do you mean by 'maybe'?" he pursued.

She laughed. "I mean maybe. If not, you'll find out soon who he is. Everyone has."

Kate returned with the bottle of Pinot Noir, and Nathan saw Amanda as she came out of the bathroom. "Good seeing you, Kate. And good luck with everything, Clo." He smiled wanly, and picked up his martini and walked away from the table.

"What a twat!" Kate exclaimed. "Did he try to say how much he missed you and all that?"

"How Amanda wasn't like me, how he still missed me, how there was no one like me, blah blah blah blah blah, bullshit bullshit," Chloe said. "Come on-fill up the glass."

"I hope you didn't fall for it," Kate said.

"No," Chloe replied, shaking her head. "He has the Stepford girlfriend, and I told him I'd met someone else."

"Who?" Kate asked curiously. And then, "Not that detective, Chloe! Not the one you said was crazy and blows things up in his flat every bloody week!"

"So what?" Chloe said. "I didn't say his name. I just said maybe Nathan would know him. Anyway, I've moved on, and with Mr. Detective there have been sparks. He's just not as receptive to them."

"All I will say, Clo," Kate advised, "is to be careful. I wouldn't pin your hopes on him."

"Oh, I won't," Chloe said lightly, but inside she felt a sort of emptiness. Sherlock was almost always there, or he would be leaving as she was coming in, and tonight he wasn't there. John was there, probably sleeping by now, and there was Mrs. Hudson who usually had card parties Saturday nights, but Sherlock was almost always up when she got home. And with how close they'd become over the past month or so-particularly over the past few weeks-she felt like no one was going to be there when she got home.

She got home at two and put Lilly out, then she got ready for bed. With Lilly snoring on the pillow beside her, she found that even after drinking three glasses of wine, she was feeling wakeful. And lonely.

Goddamn Nathan and his picture-perfect girlfriend! She didn't think it would hurt that he had moved on first, but it did. And she had played the well-adjusted, cucumber-cool ex-girlfriend, perfectly happy with being single, at first irritated to see him, and then finding him maudlin and his new girlfriend ridiculous.

But she didn't miss him, really.

She missed not going to bed alone. And, well, she missed sex. A vibrator wasn't a warm body. And it wasn't intimacy. And as much as she loved Lilly, Lilly wasn't going to reach out for her at night and kiss her good morning-not in the way a man would.

Maybe she was weak. Maybe she was sad. Maybe she just wanted someone to talk to.

It was five in the morning in Minsk. She was sure he would be up, if not sleeping fitfully. Because sleep was boring tohim.

"Sherlock Holmes," came the low voice over the phone. She felt her spirits lift.

"Hi," she said.

She heard the rustling of sheets as he moved around in his hotel bed. "Chloe," he said.

"I wanted to call and say hi," she explained, almost sheepishly. "I wanted to see if you wrapped up the case."

There was a slight smile in his voice. "I did. It was a completely mundane murder-open-and-shut domestic case." He paused for a minute. "You would have been horrified at his terrible grammar. I corrected him with you in mind."

"You're just saying that," she protested.

"You've been drinking," he said flatly.

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I want to talk to you just because I've been drinking." She bit her lip. "I know you like it better when people text. You're not mad that I called, are you?"

"No, not at all. I actually hoped to hear from you.." His voice was quiet, melodious, almost tender. "You keep me from being bored."

She laughed. "It's fun keeping you from being bored," she said. "When do you come home?"

"My flight leaves tomorrow night."

"I'm sorry if I woke you."

"I was up." He paused for another moment. "There's something wrong, isn't there, Chloe?"

"I saw Nathan with his new girlfriend."

"Really?"

"I don't miss him. He's such a bullshitter. Do you know what his girlfriend said to me? 'So you're the ex-girlfriend, I take it? Well, thanks. I got myself a good guy here because of you.'"

He laughed. "Really? I wish I'd been there to see that, and to…observe them and tell them of my findings. Of course, he would have told me to piss off."

"I would have liked it if you were there."

"Even with your friends?"

"My friends would like you."

"The question is whether or not I'd like them."

"No one ever said you had to, just as long as you tried and you made nice with them. You know how to make nice when you want to."

There was a lapse of quiet. She could hear him breathing, and her heart was pounding. "You really would have liked it if I was there." It was a statement from him, not a question.

"Yeah."

"Even after our disagreement yesterday."

"We would have gotten past it." She decided to go for broke. "I like you, Sherlock. I like you a lot."

"Do you?" he said softly.

"I miss you," she blurted.

He was silent for a few moments, perhaps turning the words over in his head. God, she just hoped she hadn't scared him or something.

"I'll be back tomorrow," he told her. "I'll see you then. And I have something for you."

"You do?" she said.

"I'm not lying to you," he said brusquely. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Okay." She felt a smile on her lips. "Good night, Sherlock."

"Good night, Chloe. Sleep well." There was a soothing tone in those last few words, and they echoed through her head as he ended the call.

* * *

By midmorning a few days later, she admitted it to herself.

She was romantically interested in Sherlock Holmes.

She had never wanted to be. She was fine being just Chloe for now, focusing on her work and not worrying about being attached, finding little things for her nephew and sending them and cooing at him over Skype and watching him get excited. She was content to come and go as she pleased, to stay home some weekends by herself because she didn't feel like dealing with anyone and just wanting to read her book or watch her movie or get ahead with work.

But relationships always came around at the worst times, when you weren't looking for them.

She hated it.

But it thrilled her.

She was eating toast with Nutella on it and working when he came up. He was even polite and knocked on the door. She called for him to come in and he did, still as fastidious-looking as always.

"She sent you the manuscript." He set a tissue-wrapped package on the table beside her and came behind her to look at the screen of her laptop. "It's truly terrible. 'His lips slanted over hers again as her eyelashes fluttered against her alabaster skin in ecstasy.' How can anyone read anything so floridly written and so dreadfully dull?"

"For some people, it's an escape from their dull, boring daily lives." She turned to look at him, her lips curving into a smile. "For me?"

"I don't buy gifts for everyone," he said, "but I thought you would appreciate it, considering our little spat before I left."

She blushed as she tore open the tissue wrapping. "Look, it's over and done with. Let's just move, on, okay?" She gasped when she saw it. It was a cream-colored linen tablecloth with a delicate floral pattern woven in, something that matched the décor of her flat, and something she could use when she entertained. "Wow!"

"Wow?" He regarded her with a smile playing on his face.

"No, this is really, really nice," Chloe said, passing her hand over the tablecloth. "You didn't have to do this. Thanks so much!" She unfolded the tablecloth to see that it would fit the table perfectly. "This is awesome. Thanks, so much!" she repeated.

"Your father will be impressed the next time he comes here for dinner," he said as she folded it back up and opened the coat closet to put it up.

"So any new cases after this?" she asked him, turning to face him.

"No, nothing worth my time." He went to her refrigerator and peered into it for something to eat.

"Why don't you go buy your own food?" she said suddenly. He straightened and turned to her with a perplexed look on his face.

"There's nothing in downstairs," he told her baldly. "Not even tinned soup."

"There's leftover pad thai from yesterday afternoon. Have that." She went back to her work, and it looked like he had found the carton.

"I'm going to Bart's this afternoon," he announced as she heard him rummage through the cupboard for a plate. "I need to pick up some things from the mortuary. I need you to come with me."

"I can't." She pointed to her laptop. "Work."

"Surely Anita Silver's epic of forbidden love in a seraglio can wait," he persisted as he found her green tea. "Jasmine flavored?"

"Sherlock!" She sprang up and snatched the tea box from him, putting it back in the cupboard.

"It would go well with the pad thai. The vanilla and caramel black tea wouldn't," he told her distastefully, making a face.

"Why can't you go get your own food?" she demanded. "I never said you could raid my fridge every time you get off a case."

"John uses your kitchen, your fridge, and your pantry," Sherlock pointed out smugly, reaching for the tea.

"But the difference is, John pays for his own food."

"I thought you enjoyed feeding me up after a case," he said.

"Now you're being obnoxious," she said, turning back to the table and sitting back down.

"Come to Bart's with me," he insisted again after some silence.

"Sherlock, I'm telling you-I can't!" she exclaimed, turning in her chair to face him. "Now eat and buzz off! I need to work!"

"Your deadline is later this week," he quipped between bites. "How far are you?'

"About a third of the way through."

She could tell he was thinking.

"If you come to Bart's with me, I'll buy you dinner," he proposed.

"I have ballet tonight." She wouldn't face him.

"You constrain yourself too much," he told her bluntly.

"No," she said, turning to face him, "I go to ballet because it's my me-time. Away from work, away from stress, away from my dad, away from _you_."

His face hardened when she said _away from you_.

He stuffed the last of the pad thai into his mouth and drained the mug of jasmine green tea, making sure to rinse his dishes.

"I think," he said coldly, "that I'll go to Bart's alone."

"Good," Chloe said. "Do that."

* * *

The fluid movements in time to the music allowed her to think.

She listened to the instructor and followed the directions exactly, her brows knitted in concentration as she watched her form, as she felt her muscles stretch gratefully as she elongated her limbs.

She knew she shouldn't play cat-and-mouse with Sherlock Holmes.

But then she wouldn't jump for him, either. Because if she jumped for him, that meant he could control her.

So in a way, it was becoming an elaborate dance for control.

Sherlock needed to understand that she wasn't dependent on him for thrills. That she had a life outside of their friendship.

But she liked being around him for the thrills. And that was what made it so difficult.

She should really ask John how he handled it.

But if she went to John, she'd be acting like she was a high-school girl.

But she knew what the problem was, she thought, as she leaned against the barre and propped her left leg on it to stretch.

She didn't want to surrender all of herself to him. Because she knew that he wouldn't surrender all of himself to her. And anyhow, it was the principle of the thing, she reasoned. No woman should give herself completely to any man. Relationships should be partnerships of equals.

And deep down, she knew that he didn't regard her as an equal. Close to one, maybe, but never truly an equal.

They could always be fuck buddies, she thought on the way home from ballet on the bus as she watched for the Baker Street stop to come up.

Friends with benefits.

But she didn't want that. There were certain things she wanted. It was either all or nothing, none of this in-between, maybe stuff. Not getting married, not having kids -those were things she could tolerate. But she could not tolerate a relationship that lasted for years and was based on a certain ambiguity.

The best thing to do, she thought, was to be honest with him.

_Look, I like you-a lot. I think you're attractive…like really hot. I think about sex with you, and while it would be really, really amazing, I think everything else with you would be really, really amazing, too._

Was she kidding?

He would laugh at her!

She got off the bus and began to saunter toward her flat.

Bit she stopped when she saw the fire trucks and the police vehicles parked in front of her building.

Oh, God.

_Ohgodohgodohgodohgod…_

She ran as quickly as she could, weaving her way around gawkers and paramedics and police officers and…

"Miss Gaynor."

She turned to see the Severus Snape wannabe behind her.

Shit, what was his name?

_Anderson_.

"My dog," was all she could say. "Where's my dog?"

The forensic investigator's brow wrinkled, and his eyes dimmed. "The blast wasn't in your building, but it blew out the windows…"

"Sherlock," Chloe whispered.

Now Anderson's face tightened. "I'll let you through," was all he said, and he motioned for the police officers standing guard to stand aside.

Chloe wandered into the open door and bounded up the stairs as quickly as she could.

The door to Sherlock's flat was open, and the detective stood there with his back to her, clad in his pajamas and his robe, with his long wool coat wrapped around him.

"Sherlock!" Chloe gasped in relief.

He turned to her, and in his arms, wrapped in a blanket, was a trembling Lilly.

Chloe let out a sob of gratitude as she took her dog into her arms. Lilly licked the tears from her face, and she dropped her gym bag as her legs nearly gave way.

And Sherlock Holmes caught her and stopped her from falling down.

And he didn't let go of her for awhile.


	13. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor and all original characters are mine. Thanks to everyone who has been actively reading, reviewing, and who has put this on either their favorites or alert lists!**

**Author's Note: This was written to A Fine Frenzy's and Bat for Lashes's radio stations on Pandora. That site is so awesome for music!**

**Treadmill**

**Part Thirteen**

_Pay my respects to grace and virtue_

_Send my condolences to good_

_Give my regards to soul and romance_

_They always did the best they could_

_And so long to devotion_

_You taught me everything I know_

_Wave goodbye, wish me well_

_You've gotta let me go_

-from the song "Human" by The Killers

She slumped against him, burying her face into his shoulder as she began so sob.

He didn't know what to do. He was at a loss. He'd never seen Chloe cry before, though once or twice he'd thought he'd seen her close to tears.

He let her stand there for a few minutes with his arms around her, the dog caught in the middle of them, until her crying subsided. She lifted her head from his shoulder and turned her face up to his. He noted that her face was a little swollen and blotchy, and there were tracks from the tears on it, too. And that her eyes looked a little bluer against it all.

If it were some sort of sentimental tale, some sort of romantic drama in which friends had realized in some moment of crisis that they loved each other, he would have kissed her. But this wasn't a romantic drama, this wasn't a sentimental tale, and Sherlock Holmes was by no means a man in love. He disentangled himself from Chloe and pointed her to the bathroom for a tissue, which she went to get. "Thanks," she sniffled as she put Lilly down and went to blow her nose.

He could remember her words from a few nights ago. _I like you. I like you a lot. I miss you. _And the way she had acted yesterday, when he stood close to her. The way her eyes darted away from his, the way her pulse seemed to quicken and the way her face had tinged pink…ever so slightly. And she had been a little anxious around him, too, it seemed.

Things were beginning to get…complicated, to say the least.

He didn't want to believe it. But Chloe had feelings for him. He's always suspected it, almost feared it, and now…now this confirmed his suspicions.

Not that he hadn't thought of Chloe in a more than platonic way. There were times when he had thought her to be very attractive and engaging, but that was because he had been bored and she had entertained him with her knowledge of what he termed "rubbish." And there had been last week when he had taken her to the crime scene to distract Anderson because her posterior looked very nice in an A-line skirt, but it really had been for a case and for nothing more. And of course spending the day with her in London, feeling her lean against him in fright during the Ripper walk, and putting his arm around her in the taxi to keep her from shivering. Well, it had all been _nice_, but she had been cold, and it wouldn't do to have her teeth still chattering when they were going to dinner with Mycroft, would it?

He heard the water running as she washed her hands, and she emerged from the bathroom, a look of concern on her face.

"You're okay?" she asked him. "You didn't get hurt?"

"Just a few bruises," he assured her.

"Good." She stood there for a moment, unsure of what to say, and then she inhaled deeply. "I'm going to go upstairs and take a look at the damage…There isn't too much, is there?"

"No," he answered. "Just the windows broke, and be careful of the glass."

"The windows in the front room?" she said, pausing at the door.

"Yes." He remained where he was, only to see that Lilly was seated at his feet, staring up at him with those bright brown eyes.

He had come to his senses after the explosion to hear the dog whining and barking hysterically and scratching at the door, and he'd found the key to Chloe's and had gotten Lilly. The dog had been shaking when he picked her up, and Mrs. Hudson, a little winded but still as fussy over the dog as ever, had urged him to wrap the "poor little dear" in a blanket so that she didn't get cold.

He took a bowl out of the cabinet and got the dog some water, staring down at Lilly as she lapped at it gratefully.

He could hear Chloe coming downstairs, and she was on her mobile. "No, Dad…We're fine, Dad. It was the building across the street….I was at ballet, but Sherlock was here and he got Lilly…No, just the windows, and a few picture frames broke, but that's nothing….No, you don't need to come over….No, she _doesn't_ need the name of your attorney. The insurance company…Fine, then. Fine, okay. Come on over. Talk to Mrs. Hudson about it. But I didn't invite you, you took this upon yourself and you need to tell her that. Okay…okay, gotta go. _Okay_, Dad! _Bye!"_

She entered his flat, looking tired. "You might want to get dressed. My dad is coming over." She shivered at the sudden blast of cold air. "I'm going to go change."

"Your father asked about me."

"Of course he asked about you. It's not like he doesn't like you," Chloe said crossly. She scowled down at her shoes and took some time to redo her ponytail. He had never seen her hair when it had been just washed and allowed to air dry with no product in it or any effort on her part, he realized. It was somewhere between straight and wavy, the top layers almost rebellious as some of them flipped in a different direction of their own accord. "Thank you, Sherlock," she said suddenly. "For getting Lilly for me."

"You're welcome," he said, and he watched her as she darted upstairs to change her clothes.

* * *

She'd cried because she was scared he'd been hurt. That was why.

When he'd held her like that, and in that moment she'd looked up at him, she had wondered if Sherlock would kiss her. Because a part of her had wanted him to, even if it meant that it might not lead to a good thing.

Now Sherlock, dressed in a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt that still made him look as put-together as ever, stood beside Mrs. Hudson as the windows were at least being sealed to keep the cold out.

Ralph knocked on the open door and entered, and it looked like he had brought some food with him. Soup and sandwiches, and she was so grateful to him for that.

"How are all of you doing now?" he asked them, setting the bags of takeaway on the counter, and he bent down to pat Lilly. "And hello, Miss Lil!"

"Mr. Gaynor." Mrs. Hudson took a few steps toward Chloe's father shakily. "You didn't have to bring dinner…"

"It's not like this is a good time to be cooking," Ralph said as he rose and drew Chloe to him. "Everything's okay, Clo?"

"Yeah, it is, Dad," Chloe replied, relaxing into her father's embrace like she did when she was a little girl. She was thankful that he had come, because somehow, it looked as though everything was going to be okay.

And with Sherlock there, it was going to be okay.

"I'll get some plates," Mrs. Hudson offered. "Come on, Sherlock…Help me out. Remember, I'm not your housekeeper, love…"

Sherlock went to get some silverware. Ralph made a face at the state of the kitchen.

"It's always like that?" he whispered to Chloe.

"Unfortunately," Chloe said. "That's why John has a key to my flat, because he can keep his food up there without it being contaminated by poison from Sherlock's experiments." She smiled up at her dad and cleared the coffee table, where they could at least sit, since most of the broken glass had been cleared from the room already.

"So," Ralph said brightly as they sat down on the floor in front of the table, "what do they think caused it?'

Sherlock reached for a sandwich and unwrapped it. "Gas leak."

"A gas leak." Ralph's expression was curious. "That must have been some gas leak."

"Naturally," Sherlock said. He glanced at Chloe and handed her the small container of the French onion soup, and she felt a blush creep up her neck as she averted her eyes from his.

She wondered if anyone else had seen that, but she didn't think of it further when Mrs. Hudson began, "Do you have any new cases on _yet_, Sherlock? A nice murder or an art theft?"

"Nothing on yet," Sherlock muttered.

"Did you see what he did to my wall?" she went on, catching Chloe's elbow, and Chloe turned to look at the wall behind her.

She had been so preoccupied that she hadn't seen it.

He had spray-painted a yellow smiley face on the wall, and he had evidently used it as target practice for his gun.

And then on the other side of it were the letters _VR_ eloquently spelled into the wall with bullet holes.

"For Victoria Regina," he told Chloe.

"I know," she said, and then she began to laugh.

Ralph remained silent all this time, his eyes on Chloe and Sherlock, and then he looked from them to the wall. Apparently Ralph didn't think it was funny, but to Chloe, strangely, it was hilarious. How could anyone think of doing something like that to pass the time? It wasn't as though anyone had been hurt, thank goodness. But it was the image of Sherlock shooting the bullets into the wall from the gun that had her laughing.

And laughing like that certainly broke the tension as Sherlock smiled at her, and as Mrs. Hudson smiled wanly and stared up at her ruined wall in dismay, and as Ralph watched them, shaking his head.

* * *

"Just call my attorney in the morning," Ralph told Mrs. Hudson as he handed her the business card. "He'll help you with everything, in case your insurance company proves to be difficult."

Mrs. Hudson clasped the business card into her hand and smiled gratefully. "Thank you, Mr. Gaynor. If I need anything else, I'll ring you."

After she had left, Ralph turned to Chloe and held the trash bin as she swept the last of the glass into the dustpan and dumped them in. "It's freezing in here, Clo," he remarked as Chloe went to put away her broom and dustpan.

"It could be worse, Dad. At least she still has some heat," Chloe said.

"Come stay with me, Clo," Ralph invited. "You can bring Lilly, and you can finish your work there. Just bring your laptop and my office will be yours."

Chloe rubbed her eyes and thought for a minute. She would be able to actually get some work done and not have to worry about Sherlock trying to drag her into another case, and if Ralph kept his office open for her, she could conduct conference calls from there.

She went into the hall closet for her laptop case and to put the flash drives into the front pocket, then went for the charger and the laptop itself, and she made sure to grab her Ipod and her earbuds, too. "Okay," she said, "I'll come stay till they get everything fixed."

"Good girl, Clo," Ralph said.

Chloe felt tears prick her eyes, and she crossed the room and hugged her dad. "Thanks so much for being here today," she whispered, her voice cracking. "It really helped."

"Anytime you need me." He pressed her close to him. "You know you can depend on me, Clo, don't you? Because I don't think you do, sometimes. Sometimes, I think you want to do it all on your own. But you can't."

Chloe felt tears run down her face. "Oh, Dad!" she wailed.

Because those were the words she'd wanted to hear from him for so long.

* * *

She knocked on Sherlock's door before she left.

He answered, his face curious.

"I'm going to stay with my dad till they get everything straightened up with the windows," she explained. "You'll text me if you need anything?"

He regarded her impassively, and he nodded quickly. "I'll keep that in mind."

She stood there for a moment in his front room, and he stood a few inches in front of her. They stared at each other for a few seconds, and then she cleared her throat and then smiled wanly. "Well," she said, "the taxi Dad called for should be here soon, so…"

"Chloe," Sherlock interrupted. "Stop talking."

She stopped.

He closed the gap between them with a few steps.

He reached out and touched her cheek.

Her heartbeat quickened. Something was going to happen.

So she decided to make the move.

She turned her face up to his and she swept the dark curls out of his face.

Her kiss was tentative at first, but somehow he didn't seem surprised. He responded to her, cupping her cheeks with his larger hands and kissing her on the eyelids and then pulling her close to him, so close…

Holy shit.

He was an amazing kisser.

"Um…" Chloe began.

"Did I leave you speechless?" he asked her ironically, and she lifted her head from his shoulder to look up at him.

"Yeah," she said, laughing, and he placed a very brief kiss on her lips. "You're okay with this?" she blurted.

"If you're asking me whether or not I'm feeling any regret or confusion, no." He gently disengaged himself from her embrace. "Your father will be looking for you." He kissed her on the tip of the nose. "I'll text you tomorrow morning."

"I'd like that." She let her hand remain in his briefly. "Good night."

"Good night."

She left his flat and sauntered upstairs with shining eyes and a smile on her face.

Ralph noticed the change in her demeanor, yet he didn't say anything about it during the taxi ride to his row house in Primrose Hill.

He knew better not to.

_

* * *

__I kissed him._

_I kissed Sherlock Holmes and he kissed me back._

_And he was okay with it._

The thoughts whirled through her mind as she lay in the bed in the guest room at her dad's house.

She emailed Kate.

_I kissed Sherlock Holmes and he kissed me back._

_Well, congrats!_ Kate wrote back. _Way to go, making the first move!_

He said he was okay with it.

There was no need to overanalyze this.

One step at a time. Sherlock Holmes did things on his terms. And he had just learned that so did she.

So since she'd made the first move, was the ball in his court next?

He said he was going to text her tomorrow.

So she only had to see.

She fell asleep feeling exhilarated. And she hadn't felt that way in a long time.

She was awakened at three in the morning by the sound of her phone beeping. If Sherlock thought he was being cute by sending a text this early, well, she would call him back and let him know that he wasn't being cute-he was being annoying.

She picked her phone up from the bedside table and hit the _Send_ button on it to see the text.

The text was from a blocked number.

And it only consisted of one word.

_Ophelia._

**Sorry this is such a short chapter, but really, a lot happens-kind of. I didn't want her and Sherlock to hook up this soon, but they really haven't. They've just kissed, and they have to figure out the transition from friends to a couple. Next chapter: Chloe/Molly interaction, after the Jim incident, and an exchange with Sherlock which makes Chloe think twice about pursuing things further with him. And John finds out about the kiss! And more Irene Adler-Norton to come!**


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor and all original characters are mine. Thanks to everyone who has been actively reading, reviewing, and who has put this on either their favorites or alert lists!**

**Treadmill**

**Part Fourteen**

_Slowly outta line and drifting closer in your sights_

_So play it out, I'm wide awake, it's a scene about me_

_There's something in your way and now someone is gonna pay_

_And if you can't get what you want, well it's all because of me_

_Now dance, fucker, dance, man, I never had a chance_

_And no one really knew, it was really only you_

-from the song "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" by The Offspring

Ralph's office was quiet, but it wasn't home.

She couldn't concentrate.

She picked up her mobile again and stared at the text. _Ophelia_.

_I got a really weird text last night_, she wrote to Sherlock.

A few minutes later, her phone went off. _Ophelia? Strange. I didn't receive anything. SH._

_The number was blocked._

_Come around later and I'll see what it is. My brother is here. SH._

_Do you mean hack into the phone system?_

_No. But I know someone who can. SH._

He ended it there.

She drummed her nails on the desk.

She had to get out of here.

* * *

"Of course I understand your predicament," Frank said after Chloe had explained the situation regarding her flat to him. "I'll break the news to Anita, and we'll have to simply push things back a bit. If we have to, we'll go with what you already have, and she'll simply have to make do."

"Thanks," Chloe said, and she hung up from the call and sighed in relief.

She sipped at her caramel latte and went back to editing. Really, she thought, she should just scrap this, but if she could get it in a little later than expected, then she would be happy.

The coffee shop was quiet; the morning rush was over and there was no one in there except for the group of university students studying in the corner. She took out her Ipod and put the earbuds in, and the sweet sounds of Beethoven filled her ears and transported her into another world.

When she read a line about a kiss, her mind wandered.

Sherlock's kiss.

She remembered the softness of his lips and the heat of his mouth, the minty taste of toothpaste and the cleverness of his tongue, the lightness of his fingers as they glided up her arms. The measured subtleness of it all as he seemed to be gauging her reactions to the things he did.

Sex with him must be amazing.

And then came another text.

_At Bart's. Come immediately. In the mortuary. SH._

_I'm busy._

_I need you here. Too many questions, need someone to help answer them. SH._

_What kinds of questions?_

_Just come to Bart's and I'll buy you lunch. SH._

She sighed audibly. She wouldn't be able to get any work done for editing anyhow.

So she may as well make herself useful to someone who needed it.

* * *

"Why the hell are you going to Bart's?" Ralph demanded loudly into Chloe's ear as she tried to juggle her purse, her laptop bag, the caramel macchiato, and her cell phone as she got into the taxi.

"Sherlock Holmes has work for me," she explained.

"What kind of work?"

"Research," she said. "Look, Dad, here's how it goes: Sherlock Holmes is a genius who can get basic knowledge about something or someone just from looking at it, and a lot of it is from experience. The trouble is, he doesn't know everything. This is where I come in. I can get him the info he needs or can find someone who can with the academic contacts…"

"From working with me." Ralph's voice was sharp. "I hope he pays you for this freelance work."

"We have yet to discuss pay. It's a new thing," she said.

"Remember what you're worth, Clo."

"Yeah, I will." She got off the phone with him as quickly as she could, and then a call came in from her mother.

"Chloe." Maureen must have been calling during her free period; that was always the time when her mother called.

"Mom," Chloe said, "hi…"

"You're okay?" Maureen asked her directly. "Your dad called Megan about the explosion across the street from your flat, and…"

"It's fine, Mom. Everything's fine." She wasn't as annoyed with her mother as she was with her father, maybe because Maureen was an ocean away and had no way to act like a helicopter parent. "I'm staying with Dad, and everything is being taken care of. It just blew out the windows and gave Lilly a scare, but luckily Sherlock…"

"Sherlock, Chloe?" Maureen interrupted. "Who's Sherlock?"

She thought it better not to tell her mother everything; it had always been better that way since she had started college. "He lives downstairs, Mom. He's a good friend. He got Lilly and made sure she was okay."

"He sounds like he is if he makes sure your dog is okay."

This was why Chloe loved her mother. Maureen knew when to tread softly and to be subtle, not make assumptions like Ralph did. Chloe always told her mother things when Chloe was ready to do so. Maureen had always respected that ever since Chloe had come back from the treatment program in the hospital so many years ago.

"You'll call me, of course," Maureen said, "if you need anything?"

"Of course I will, Mom," Chloe promised. And then, "He's a really cool guy, Mom. Read the blog…"

By the end of the call, Chloe was certain her mother had gotten the hint that there was something going on between Sherlock and herself.

* * *

"Oh, Chloe, good to see you!" Sherlock exclaimed as she entered the lab. Chloe stopped when she saw the mousy lab attendant set another cup of coffee beside the microscope and computer Sherlock was working at. "Molly, can you get Chloe a coffee? Two sugars, caramel-flavored creamer…"

"I'm good," Chloe interrupted. She didn't like the way Molly was staring at her, almost with genuine curiosity. What had Sherlock told Molly about her?

"Chloe, this is Molly Hooper, one of the attendants in the mortuary. Molly, this is Chloe Gaynor, a colleague."

Chloe cringed at the way he said _colleague_, as though Chloe were in on something Molly wasn't.

It didn't seem to phase Molly. Outwardly.

"I've heard all sorts about you," Molly said to Chloe in a rather squeaky voice. "Sherlock says you do research for him?"

"Um, yeah," Chloe said. "It's a well-paying gig."

"Chloe likes working _with_ me," Sherlock explained to Molly. "She and I actually have a lot of fun while we're on cases. Don't we, Clo?"

Chloe forced a smile. "Of course, _Sherlock_."

"Molly, if you don't mind…" Sherlock began, and Molly sulked slightly, taking this as her cue to leave. Sherlock indicated the stool beside his, and Chloe took off her coat and went to sit down on it.

"So a case found you?" she asked him, watching him as he prepared a microscope slide.

He carefully placed the slide under the microscope and peered through the eyepieces. "It wasn't a gas leak."

"What?" she said, astonished.

"The explosion last night, it wasn't a gas leak." He removed the surgical gloves he had been wearing and reached down for Chloe's purse, which had been deposited at her feet. Before she could protest, he produced the small bottle of hand sanitizer she carried in it.

"You have no sense of boundaries," she said disgustedly.

"Oh, really, Chloe, it's not like I'd want your money or your mobile," he muttered back. "Since last night, it seems that boundaries between us have been redefined, wouldn't you say?"

"Yeah, I would say that, but that still doesn't…"

"It's hand sanitizer, Chloe. I saw it in your purse last week as you were drunkenly searching for your keys," he interrupted. "If anything, at least you can trust that I wouldn't go into your purse for something valuable." He handed the bottle back to her. "Anyhow, I'm conducting tests, and you wouldn't want the subject to be contaminated, would you? Molly, in her distracted state, brought me some gloves with the powder in them. She knows that I hate the ones with powder…"

"She made a mistake," Chloe said. "Big deal. Even you make mistakes." She glanced at the pair of trainers in front of them. "So this is evidence?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Cold case?"

"Why would you say it was a cold case?"

"They're high-tops. When I was little, we all wore high-tops. It's such an eighties thing." She leaned over to get a better look at them.

He watched her as she studied the high-tops, and then she turned to him. "They look like they've been worn a lot," was all she said.

"Yes," he said as his impatient eyes flicked from the computer screen to her, "I've established that."

She straightened and gave him a crooked smile. "Where did you find them?"

"In the basement flat at Baker Street," he answered, holding out his hand. "Your phone?"

Chloe fished her phone out of her purse and handed it to him. "What do you mean in the basement flat?" she asked him.

"The gas leak was really a bomb. The police found a strongbox in the wreckage, and there was a mobile in it." He put down Chloe's phone and produced another from his pocket. It was a Smartphone with a pink casing around it.

"From A Study in Pink?" she ventured.

He put the phone away and picked up Chloe's phone again. "The picture on the phone led us to the basement flat. The shoes _are_ from a long-ago case…which is why I need you here."

"Someone just broke into the basement flat at Baker Street," she said. "And left a pair of shoes and took a picture…"

"Chloe, don't think about that," he ordered. "I need your mind clear and focused. Research, Chloe, research."

She moved a little closer to him, just so that her arm was touching his. The break-in…it wasn't directed at her, but still…Being close to him was comforting, helped her clear her mind, become more focused.

"I need you to go to the university library and find everything you can on the Carl Powers case. I have plenty, but if there are any journal articles on it or anything, find them and bring them to me."

"Carl Powers?" she asked him.

"It was a long time ago-a young swimmer was found in an area pool drowned. All of his clothing was there except for his shoes…but still the police dismissed it as an accident."

"You didn't think so?"

"They wouldn't listen to me."

"You're thinking serial killer? One who sent a trophy of his first kill to you?"

"I'm thinking of a lot of things." He frowned over the Ophelia message. "I'll send a text to Mycroft about this. He might be able to trace it. In the meantime…"

"Lunch?" Chloe reminded him. He shook his head, as though he may have forgotten, and he dug into his pocket for his wallet and handed her some cash.

"Courtesy of the canteen," he told her.

"Do they have Wi-Fi?"

"The lobby does, at least."

"How long ago was the case?" she asked him.

"Twenty years."

"I'll see what I can find out during lunch." She picked up her laptop bag and her purse and smiled at him, and he returned to his work as she left.

"Chloe!" she heard a high-pitched, squeaky voice call out. She turned to see Molly Hooper approaching, and a thin, unassuming dark-haired man shyly following.

"Molly…" Chloe said with a forced smile. "Hi again…"

Molly and the little man (because that was what he was…and the gray v-neck t-shirt wasn't exactly work appropriate, but whatever) came to where Chloe stood in the middle of the hallway. Molly's pale face was glowing. "Jim, this is Chloe Gaynor, Sherlock Holmes's associate. Chloe, this is Jim…from IT. We met here at work."

Chloe surveyed Jim. His eyes darted away from hers. "Hi," she said with feigned brightness. "Nice to meet you."

"Hi," Jim said shyly. He stared down at his shoes, then at the ceiling, and then his eyes finally met Chloe's. "So what's it like working for Sherlock Holmes? I've followed the blog, and there's no mention of you in it…"

"Oh, um…" Chloe racked her brains for an answer. "Well, he's a neighbor, and it was kind of a spontaneous thing, so…so now I do stuff for him now and then."

"That's really cool," Jim remarked.

"Yeah," Chloe said. "Well, nice meeting both of you, I have to go…"

"Okay," Molly chirped, and Chloe made her way to the canteen from there.

She didn't expect to return to a shitstorm half an hour later.

* * *

Chloe hit the bathroom on the way back from lunch to find Molly in there, sobbing her eyes out.

She used the bathroom first, and then when she came out to wash her hands, she offered Molly a paper towel so that the other woman could blow her nose.

"You okay?" Chloe asked her, deciding to tread lightly. "You were on top of the world half an hour ago…"

"But then Sherlock Holmes had to go spoil it," Molly quavered, wiping her eyes and turning to stare at Chloe with a blotchy face. "I just dumped Jim."

Chloe was taken aback at this. "Oh," was all she said. "Can as I ask why?"

"Jim is _gay_!" Molly's voice became shrill as she said that last word. "He-he tried to give Sherlock his _phone number_! A-and then Sherlock _told me_…"

"How did he say it?"

"I introduced Jim, and Sherlock just said, 'Gay.' Then he pretended to say, 'Hey' so that it looked like it slipped out…"

_For fuck's sake._ Sherlock needed a tutorial on people skills. "That sucks," Chloe said. "How'd Jim take the breakup?"

"He didn't seem to care."

"Did you sleep with him?"

Molly turned to her, her face aghast. _"What?"_

"Did you sleep with him?" Chloe repeated. "Just a quick yes or no…I won't pry further."

Molly shook her head vehemently.

"Okay. Positive thing number one: You found out before you slept with him. He didn't put you at risk for any gross diseases. And he didn't seem to care when you dumped him. So positive thing number two: At least you found out before you slept with him, and you've been seeing him how long?"

"A month."

"A month is a long time, but it's not like you wasted six months or a year or something." Now Chloe really felt sorry for her. It was one thing if Sherlock flirted with her to get what he wanted-and Molly seemed to be on to that now-but it was another if some guy was leading Molly on to cover up his closeted sexuality. "It's normal to be bummed about a breakup, but don't be too bummed. He wasn't worth it-you know?"

"I know," Molly squeaked out, and she blew her nose again and smiled at Chloe wanly. "Thanks."

Chloe pulled out her mobile. "So what's your phone number? When you're ready, you can come out with my friends and me. I can text you mine later…"

Molly, a little perplexed with Chloe's pushiness, gave Chloe the number to her mobile, and Chloe slid the keyboard back inside her own mobile with a smile. "Okay. Now splash your face with some cold water, then retouch your makeup. Put on a brave face."

And Chloe had a bone to pick with Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

Chloe entered the lab and stood at the threshold, her eyes locked onto Sherlock. He looked up from his work and inclined his head. "What is it, Chloe?" he asked her in a weary voice.

"I don't know. You tell me what you think from this little story." Chloe made her way to his side as she started her narrative. "I'm on my way to lunch, and nice little Molly Hooper introduces her boyfriend Jim to me. He's a little shy, not anything great, but that's her thing. I come back half an hour later and go to the bathroom to find her sobbing her eyes out in there."

"She was crying-so?" Sherlock seemed unconcerned.

"She was crying because she'd just dumped her boyfriend, because someone let it slip that he was gay."

He blinked. "Yes. I told her."

"But in front of her boyfriend?"

"It was a reflex."

"I set her straight. Hopefully she'll be okay." Chloe saw that it still didn't seem to register with him. "Don't you think you're being insensitive, Sherlock?"

"Insensitive? I told her the truth, Chloe, and it was something she needed to know. Better she find out now than marry him and have children and then discover he's gay. She'll be grateful in the long run."

"That's not the point, Sherlock."

"Would you have let her keep dating him if you knew, sweet little, oblivious Molly so in love with Jim when he's really chasing other men on the side?"

"I wouldn't have told her like you did!"

"Well, you had a pep talk with her and smoothed it over. Thanks, by the way."

"You're so thoughtless about other people's feelings. I would've thought since you're so perceptive, you'd be tactful, at least."

"I care about feelings." His voice was quiet, and there was a certain light in his eyes that came and went as he stared at her.

But Chloe wasn't having it. "Right-your own."

"I care, Chloe. I do," he insisted.

"I'm sure you do," she mumbled. She reached for her coat and buttoned it, then she dug into her purse for her sunglasses and slid them behind her ears so that they rested on top of her head. "Look, I'll email whatever info I can to you and leave any papers in your box. As for everything else, I think we need to put the brakes on it for awhile."

She slung her purse and her laptop bag over her shoulders, and then she turned away to leave.

"So you're doing what you always do," he called.

She turned to face him. "What do you mean?"

He smiled, the type of smile he had when he would just find out about a case or when he was coming close to closing one. "You're doing what you do best. You're running."

She narrowed her eyes as tears threatened to fall, as her cheeks heated up with the anger boiling inside of her.

"Go to hell," she spat out, and she hurried out of the room, down the hallway, and never looked back.


	15. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor and all original characters are mine. Sorry this took so long to update! It's kind of like a belated Christmas gift to you guys. Thanks to everyone who has been actively reading and reviewing! **

**Treadmill**

**Part Fifteen**

_So tell me what you want to hearSomething that were like those years_

_Sick of all the insincere_

_So I'm gonna give all my secrets away_

_This time, don't need another perfect lie_

_Don't care if critics ever jump in line_

_I'm gonna give all my secrets away_

-from the song "Secrets" by One Republic

John saw Chloe hurrying down the hall like a bat out of hell. Her face was screwed up into an angry expression, and he stood aside so that she could get through.

"Off in a hurry?" he called out, perplexed.

She stopped, turning to face him. She pulled her fleece, cream-colored gloves out of her pockets. "Yeah," she replied as she pulled them on. "I have a deadline."

She continued on her way, in a hurry to go nowhere, he thought, and he watched as she disappeared around the corner.

He made his way into the laboratory where Sherlock still sat in front of the computer, seeing what other things might have lingered on the shoes. "There you are," Sherlock said without looking up. "Did you happen to see Chloe leave?"

"Yeah," John said. "About that…"

"I think you should text her. She's a little put out right now," Sherlock interrupted calmly.

John sighed. "Why can't you text her?" he demanded.

"Because she's angry with me. I told her the truth about some things and she stomped out of here. So I'll tell you what I need, and you text her with it."

"You want me to be the middle-man?" John asked incredulously.

Sherlock turned to him and merely blinked. "Of course," he said in an it's-so-obvious tone. "I don't think she'll answer my texts."

"Well, did you even _try_?" John demanded, and Sherlock sighed again.

"No."

"Well, then text her and apologize," John mumbled. "Better yet, _call her_."

Sherlock whipped out his mobile from his pocket and typed in a quick message. In a few minutes, the mobile beeped, signifying he had received another message. Sherlock handed John his mobile so that he could see the exchange.

_Please find out about something for me. SH._

_Fuck off. Chloe._

"What did you do?" John asked him in astonishment. "Not what happened with Molly…"

Sherlock didn't respond. His silence was confirmation enough.

"It _was _about what happened with Molly!" John exclaimed.

Sherlock shifted uneasily. "There's more to it. Something…happened between Chloe and me."

_Oh, for fuck's sake. _John scrubbed his hand over his face. "You didn't sleep with her, did you?"

"_No."_ It was the same tone he had used last night when John had asked him about the blog.

"You and Chloe?" John repeated. Sherlock and Chloe. That was almost difficult to believe, but as John turned it over in his mind, it became more believable. Chloe was a smart woman, savvy when it came to dealing with people, whereas Sherlock wasn't, for all of his intelligence and abilities. And yet it had never seemed to bother Chloe; rather, like John, Chloe seemed to welcome Sherlock and his eccentricities and the excitement he brought with him.

And Sherlock genuinely respected Chloe.

Had that respect turned into something more?

Sherlock Holmes had never seemed capable of love, and he had firmly stated that women weren't his area and he was married to his work. John had suspected he might be gay, since Sherlock hadn't really discussed it, but then from what John had seen, he'd decided not to pursue the question of Sherlock's preferences.

"Yes," Sherlock said, "Chloe and me. Now will you call her, please? I need her to go to Scotland Yard for me. Lestrade is following up on something, and Chloe is supposed to meet him there at one."

John was taken aback. "You've arranged for Chloe to meet with Lestrade-and Chloe doesn't know about it?"

"It isn't as though she has anything better to do," Sherlock muttered.

"You're a real piece of work, you know that?" John said as he took his own mobile out of his pocket. "Chloe has got to work-_I_ have got to work-but we all have to stop what we're doing just because _you_ have a case…"

"Are you going to call her?" Sherlock interrupted.

John shook his head and scrolled down to Chloe's mobile number. Her line rang a few times, until she picked it up with a cool, "Hello?"

"Chloe!" John exclaimed. "I've been trying to get hold of you!"

"You have?" Chloe said incredulously.

"Well, actually Sherlock has," John admitted, and Sherlock flashed him a dark look. "Sherlock needs me to do something, only I can't do it for him."

"So you're asking me to do it?" Chloe said levelly.

"Yeah," John replied uncomfortably, feeling his pulse begin to beat more quickly and a blush creep into his face. "See, Sherlock needs someone to go to Scotland Yard to meet with Inspector Lestrade and get some details on the Carl Powers case. I was wondering if you could…"

"Why the fuck do you always have to bug me?" Chloe demanded. "If it's not you, it's him. 'Chloe, do this for me, Chloe, do that for me.' You're no better than my dad."

John glared at Sherlock as he told Chloe, "Inspector Lestrade would rather deal with you."

Silence. "Oh really?" Chloe said softly.

"He doesn't always like dealing with Sherlock," John said pointedly. "And who does? He can get awfully cocky, can't he?"

"Yes, he can," Chloe said laughingly. "So what do you need done?"

John looked at Sherlock, who only said, "Research. Synopsis. What she does."

"How about I take pics of them on my mobile and send them to you?" Chloe said sarcastically. "I'll make sure the print is tiny enough so you can't even see it…"

John was getting frustrated now. Here was Sherlock, giving him orders, wanting him to act like a messenger between him and Chloe-whom Sherlock treated like a secretary sometimes.

"Look," John said, "whatever you find, email your notes to Sherlock."

A clicking of nails on a laptop keyboard. "I can do that."

"Thanks, Clo," John said.

"You're welcome."

Sherlock whirled to face John after he ended the call with Chloe. "You were having a little too much fun with that."

"So what if I was?" John retorted. "Your idea of fun is different from the normal person's, anyway, so how would you know?"

"I could see it," Sherlock mumbled. He reached for his coat. "We need to go back to Baker Street, anyhow, John. I have more resources there."

John wordlessly put on his coat and followed Sherlock out of the laboratory.

What was going on between Sherlock and Chloe, anyhow? They were friends of the platonic sort, and they never seemed to flirt back and forth. It was just the normal banter that existed between anyone and Sherlock, only a little friendlier, as though Chloe could appreciate Sherlock's observations with a sense of humor.

But John knew that Chloe was pretty complicated herself.

He wouldn't think about it anymore, he decided. It was their mess, let them sort it out.

* * *

The joys of knowing that at least someone had a well-stocked cupboard, John thought. Ham and cheese sandwich with a little mustard and pickles, and he found an apple to go with them.

Even though it was cold, it was quiet. Was this what Chloe liked-her quiet? Was this what her life had been like before Sherlock Holmes had come crashing in?

Just like his life had been quiet, uneventful…

Dull.

Not really much of anything.

The sound of the ringer on his mobile started him from his reverie.

It was Chloe.

She had found something.

* * *

Chloe had never been to Scotland Yard on business, just to see the crime museum. Now she was here on business of behalf of the man who pissed her off most when she really should have just told him to piss off.

Why did she always do this to herself?

Because she really was putting off finishing editing that book.

Because she enjoyed doing research. And not just any research. Research for Sherlock Holmes.

But it was the way he had treated Molly that had upset her. And that made her ask herself the question about how he would treat her when he was annoyed with her or absorbed in something.

But then she wasn't Molly Hooper.

She got out of the taxi and entered the Scotland Yard offices, saying she was there to meet Inspector Lestrade on behalf of Sherlock Holmes. A look passed between the constables on staff, and she wondered what that was all about. Clearly, Sherlock had not made very many friends even here among the constables-the beat cops-and anyone working with him was viewed with the same wariness as they viewed him.

Lestrade was waiting for her in the lobby and nodded at her pleasantly. "Good seeing you again, Chloe."

"Great to see you, too," Chloe answered as he led her to his office. She passed through the incident room and ignored the curious looks she got from the other officers. She took off her coat and put down her purse and her laptop bag, and he indicated a chair so she could sit.

"Tea or coffee?" he asked her cordially.

"Coffee would be great."

He left for a few moments and returned with a mug of coffee for her, setting a few sugar and cream packets down beside it.

"I'm surprised Sherlock sent you here," Lestrade remarked, "but then I'm _not _surprised, since he doesn't get on with half the staff here." He opened a drawer of his desk and produced the case file. "Carl Powers. Everything should be in there. I don't know what he'd want, though…"

"Neither do I," Chloe muttered, opening up the case file and staring at the typewritten notes.

"I'll leave you to it, then," Lestrade said as he went to the door of his office. "If you need anything, anyone here can help you."

"Thanks," Chloe mumbled as he walked out, closing the door behind him.

Now the question would be one thing: What would Sherlock look for?

She pored over the notes, and she found the coroner's report.

Dead. Drowned, as a result of hitting his head on the pool edge as he was suffering a seizure while in the deep end of the swimming pool.

There were no signs of puncture marks from needles.

How?

He hit his head.

She called John.

"He hit his head."

* * *

"He hit his head?" Sherlock demanded. "That's all she got?"

"She's not a genius like you," John quipped. "She's human, like the rest of us."

Sherlock made a face, then checked his email again. "She doesn't have to drag her feet in getting the information."

John rolled is eyes and sat down in the armchair across from Sherlock's. "Right, like she's doing it on purpose, Sherlock. Just to spite you."

Sherlock returned to his information on the Carl Powers case for the next hour, and then he jumped up and reached for his laptop when the tiny _ping_ signaled the arrival of a new email.

"Would you look at that?" Sherlock said snidely. "It seems as though our Chloe did come through."

* * *

Inspector Regina Gregson had just returned from a week-long vacation in Barbados, where her boyfriend had proposed to her and where it had been a thousand times warmer than it was here in London. If she had been able to stay in bed this morning, curled under her down comforter, dreaming of warm beaches and sunny skies, she would have done so. But of course, reality called, and she was back to work promptly that morning.

The very mention of Sherlock Holmes made her stomach drop and her head begin to pound; she had never worked with Holmes, but the stories and the mundane conversations she had shared with him were enough. The whole incident when he announced Sally Donovan's affair with Anderson had been a laugh, though. Reggie had warned Sally about Anderson-that he was still very married and a little skeevy-but of course Sally didn't listen. Apparently it was all over DV that he was a good fuck, something which Sally wanted and which he was willing to be. Sally seemed very happy, and so did he, but Reggie still couldn't figure out what the allure was behind Anderson. His haircut reminded her of Johnny Depp's in the _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_ remake, and while it might be all right on Johnny Depp, it certainly did nothing for Anderson.

Lestrade had asked her to look further into an old case that had been classified as an accidental drowning-the Carl Powers case-because it had to do with a present one that both he and Sherlock Holmes were working on. Grudgingly, Reggie went and pulled the case file and pored over the notes before Lestrade took them so that Freak Holmes could take a look at them.

But it wasn't Freak Holmes in the office. Instead, it was a petite brunette going over the case notes, then making her own notes on her laptop.

Had Sherlock Holmes moved up in the world and hired an assistant, one to help him with more than what the colleague-that doctor-could?

"She's relatively normal," Lestrade hissed as he stopped at Reggie's desk. "A little neurotic, but normal."

"You want me to talk to her?" Reggie asked curiously.

"She's just doing what Sherlock doesn't want to do," Lestrade murmured.

"He must be a bitch to work for," Reggie remarked.

Here Lestrade grinned. "You want to go back to Barbados, don't you?"

"I'd die to go back."

"Congrats on your engagement. Jack did a good job on the ring."

"Thanks." Reggie smiled.

"Donovan thinks she's sleeping with him."

"Donovan should know about people living in glass houses."

Lestrade suppressed a laugh as Chloe rose and stopped in the doorway of his office. "Can we scan the coroner photos, or copy them, so I can email them or take them to Sherlock?"

Lestrade glanced over at Reggie, who sighed and went into Lestrade's office for the case file and the photos. "I'll be right back," she told Chloe.

Chloe smiled. "Thanks. Thanks so much."

Reggie really wished she had stayed in bed that day.

She didn't want to work with Sherlock Holmes-at all-in any capacity.

Even if it was with some assistant.

* * *

John was eating dinner when Chloe appeared with the crime scene and coroner's photos. Sherlock bolted from his seat to get them, and he snatched the manila envelope from Chloe without a word and tore it open, spreading the pictures out on the floor as he sat down.

John noted the glare on Chloe's face.

"So," she said crisply, "nothing? Not even a thank you?"

Sherlock picked up another photo, scrutinizing it. "You can go home now, Chloe, and do your real job."

Chloe jutted out a hip, placing her hand on it.

"Are you hungry, Chloe?" John broke in. "Mrs. Hudson made shepherd's pie."

"No, thanks, John. My dad has stuff at his house for me." Chloe turned her attention to Sherlock. "I just demonstrated. That's how the rest of us human beings act. We say please and thank you and remember that other people have lives and important things to do, too."

Sherlock glanced up at her with a cruel smile. "Then I suggest you go back to your boring, cookie-cutter little life that you think is so important."

Chloe now glared daggers at him, her lips pressed together in a thin line as two red spots appeared on her cheeks. "You are such an asshole," she hissed. She went to the door, muttering good night to John, and hurried down the stairs. John heard a muffled "ouch," and went to the door to check, but Chloe had already left when he peered down the staircase.

"She tripped," Sherlock murmured. "She always trips on that particular step and bangs into something when she's in a hurry."

John slammed the door shut. "This is a mess that you'll have to clean up on your own!" he told Sherlock as he went to the fridge for a beer.

"It's not a mess," Sherlock said. "It's an inconvenience. Now will you please be quiet and stop staring? It's bothering me. Keeps me from thinking."

Frustrated, John finished his meal, put away the leftovers, washed the dishes, and went upstairs to his bedroom.

Whatever this challenge was that Sherlock had stepped up to, it didn't seem to bode well at all. Sherlock had already lost one important resource in Molly Hooper, and now he was on his way to losing Chloe as well. In more ways than just for help on cases.

And then John began to wonder if this was the point of it all along, to isolate Sherlock, so that he would be alone.

And so that the real game could begin.

_

* * *

__I'm not that angry with you._

No.

_Please call. Let's talk this out._

She erased it again. That wouldn't work.

Why did she do this to herself? Why was she agonizing over this?

She decided on something neutral.

_If you need anything else done during the day, please call or email, but keep in mind that I have a deadline for getting this book done._

Yes. That worked.

Chloe sent the text. And waited.

There was a response about three minutes later.

_Chloe-The blow to his head was not the cause of death. Dig further for me. What does Lestrade have about Powers's friends and family? Look into cause of the seizure and text back. SH._

_Why do you want me to do this for you? Chloe._

_I have another case on. SH._

She texted back. _Do you know what you can do with your cases?_

_I'll compensate you for your time. SH._

Well, she thought, that was better.

Now if she could only not be angry with him.


	16. Chapter 16

_Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock," but Chloe Gaynor and all original characters are mine. Sorry this took so long to update; I was having some health issues but now feel a lot better! Thanks to everyone who has been actively reading and reviewing!_

_**Treadmill**_

_**Part Sixteen**_

_O no I see, _

_A spider web and it's me in the middle, _

_So I twist and turn, _

_Here I am in love in a bubble, _

_Singing, I never meant to cause you trouble, _

_I never meant to do you wrong, _

_And I, well if I ever caused you trouble, _

_Although I never meant to do you harm. _

-from the song "Trouble" by Coldplay

"So you want me to help you do Sherlock Holmes's legwork for him?" Reggie Gregson summed up as Chloe sat back in her chair.

"Yeah, basically," Chloe said. "He thinks there might be more to the Carl Powers case than meets the eye. And from what I've seen, he could be right."

"It was an accident. Case closed, from what I read," Reggie gritted out. "Does Sherlock think it was a murder?"

Chloe tilted her head. "He thinks there might be more than meets the eye, and I agree with him."

"You read the case file?"

"Cover to cover."

Reggie regarded Chloe levelly. "So you expect me to go with you and act as though this is police business when it's really an errand for Sherlock Holmes?"

Chloe bit her lip and glanced away. "Kind of…"

"And Lestrade thinks just because I'm available, I'll help you," Reggie went on.

"Maybe."

Reggie scoffed. "This is bullocks. Sherlock Holmes doesn't bloody run this police department, but he's telling us which cases to look into!"

Chloe lifted one shoulder. "Maybe I'll just do it myself. No one ever said you had to be directly involved, D.I. Gregson."

Gregson's dark eyes narrowed. "And no one ever said I wasn't interested in heating up what could be a cold case, did they?"

"No," Chloe replied.

"So where to first, Chloe?" Reggie asked her.

Chloe straightened and buttoned up her peacoat. "Where else? To see Carl Powers's parents."

* * *

"Carl had friends. Lots of them." Mary Powers put the steaming mug of tea down in front of Chloe. "He was the top athlete in his class…best swimmer, best rugby player." Now she sat down in her own chair. "Everyone loved him."

Reggie picked up her mug of tea and glanced at Chloe. The other woman's eyebrows were raised in an expression of incredulity, as though she thought that there was more to Carl Powers than his mother was letting on. There always was more. Those were the standard things said when asking victims' friends and family about what might have been a contributing factor to the murder. _He had no enemies. He was a good person. Everyone loved him._

But Chloe should really hide her disbelief.

"Do you still have anything of his that we could look at?" Reggie asked Mrs. Powers. Mrs. Powers glanced at Reggie and nodded.

"We still have some of his things in his room. Do you want to take a look?"

"Would you mind, Mrs. Powers?" Reggie said.

"Not at all. Come, I'll show you."

Mrs. Powers led them up the steep stairs to what had once been Carl's bedroom, but now served as a sort of guest room. Reggie watched as the older woman opened up the closet to reveal a few cardboard boxes stacked on the very top shelf.

"Do you have a stool or something?" Chloe asked Mrs. Powers. "I can probably get up there and get them."

Mrs. Powers left the bedroom for a moment and returned with a bathroom stool. Chloe took it from her and set it down on the floor in front of the closet, then stepped onto the stool. She pulled down the three boxes and set them on the floor. Reggie dragged the largest one toward the center of the room and opened it. Chloe stepped off of the stool and knelt down on the floor beside Reggie, tugging another box toward her.

"I'll just leave the stool there," Mrs. Powers said, and Reggie could hear her descending the staircase.

Chloe opened the other box and began to riffle through it, pulling out medals and some trophies. "Nothing here," she told Reggie. She went to the smallest box and opened that one

But it was Reggie who struck gold. It was Reggie who found the notebook full of school assignments, and when the note fluttered out, Chloe picked it up.

"What does it say?" Reggie asked her.

"It says _Leave me alone. Leave me alone or you'll pay._ And it's from a Jimmy." She handed the note to Reggie.

"Well, now we know why Carl seemed to have so many friends," Reggie said. "It seems like he was a bully."

* * *

"Carl Powers was a bully all right." Rob Hallett took a long drag from his cigarette and blew a gray cloud of smoke into the air. Reggie watched as Chloe dug into her purse for her inhaler, then surreptitiously took a few puffs.

"How would you say he was a bully?" Reggie asked him.

Hallett frowned. "The usual stuff. Would always shout something insulting in the hallways, or he would rat someone out for something they didn't do. And changing before gym class…he was a real terror then…"

"And no one did anything?" Reggie said, appalled.

Hallett laughed hoarsely. "You think they would do anything to rein in their star rugby player and swimmer? His mum and dad would have pulled him out of that school in no time. So the little bugger had no rules, nothing. He could do what he wanted. And in the locker rooms, it was the worst. It was always the worst…"

His eyes flicked away, and he swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, before he took another hit from the cigarette.

Reggie decided to push further. "Can you tell us who Jimmy is?"

"Jimmy." A laugh. "Jimmy Moriarty. The one Carl always liked to pick on."

"Hence the note," Chloe murmured.

"Carl always made Jimmy do his math homework for him. And once he made Jim steal answers to a test. That was when Jimmy wrote the note."

"Was there anything that happened after Carl got the note?" Reggie pursued, and Hallett smiled ironically.

"Yeah-Carl died. I was relieved. Everyone was relieved. You shouldn't be relieved when someone dies, but we were. Because it meant he couldn't torment is anymore."

Reggie watched as Chloe's brows knitted and she averted her gaze from Hallett. Reggie managed a quick smile and faced Hallett once more. "Thank you for all of you help. If we need anything else, we'll ring you, and if you think of anything else, please don't hesitate to ring me." She handed Hallett her card. Chloe murmured an automatic, "Thank you," and left the coffee shop.

"So what was that all about?" Reggie asked Chloe as they sat in the taxi.

"What do you mean?" Chloe asked her, turning to her.

"The long face, how you got quiet all of a sudden. Something bothering you?"

Chloe sighed audibly, twisting her gloves in her hands to keep them from trembling. "I've been there."

"Been there? Been where?"

"Been to the place where you're relieved a bully's dead."

Reggie tilted her head, her brown eyes softening. "I think we all have."

Chloe squirmed in her seat, staring down into her lap. "I mean, not because of a case you've seen, but because of actual experience."

"Experience?"

Chloe shrugged. "It's just…well, when I was in high school, I was bullied. And it was because of what happened to one of my friends."

"What happened?"

"Alison was on the cheerleading squad freshmen year, and we'd been invited to a party after the football game. She went with her friends from the squad, but my mom didn't let me go. They were drinking, and one of the football players raped her when she was passed out. She went to the hospital and reported it and everything, but it never went beyond that. They called her a slut and a lying bitch…all sorts of horrible things. And they picked on me because I was one of the only people who stuck by her. She ended up moving, it got so bad, and my mom put my sisters and me in Catholic school. In senior year, he was killed in a drunk driving accident." Chloe set her teeth. "And you know what? I was glad he was dead."

"Do you still talk to your friend?" Reggie asked her, and Chloe made a face.

"A little. I think it's hard for her sometimes, because that's something that completely turns your world inside out. And so many people blamed _her_ when the rapist is the one at fault. Even if she hadn't been there, it would have been someone else. But people don't always listen to that. But looking back, I'm glad I stuck by her."

Reggie smiled softly. "Maybe this is why you enjoy working with Sherlock Holmes. Even if he is a freak."

Chloe sat back in her seat. The thought had never occurred to her. Despite all of his quirks, Sherlock did, after all, strive to do the right thing, even if it was just the chase and not the righting of wrongs that thrilled him the most. He wasn't perfect, but then he had so much potential, too.

And then her resolve began to crumble, just a little bit.

Her life before Sherlock Holmes hadn't been boring, but it had been safe, and she had remained in her little bubble, never venturing out.

And then he had changed all that. And she liked it.

And she wasn't ready to give that up.

* * *

_Found something. CG._

_What have you found? SH._

_I think I have a name. CG._

_A name for what? SH._

_The Carl Powers case, dummy. CG._

_I know which case it is, Chloe. SH._

_We need to meet someplace for an info drop. CG._

_No time. SH._

_What do you mean no time? CG._

_Other cases. Other bombs. Time constraint. SH._

_More bombs? CG._

_You didn't know? SH._

_I've been doing running around for you. I don't always have time to catch the news. CG._

_I've been expecting this for some time. SH._

_Expecting what? CG._

_Someone is playing a game with me. We have yet to see who wins. SH._

_A game? I don't understand. CG._

_Ololon, the messages on the blog…it's all connected. SH._

_What's all connected? Sherlock, you're freaking me out… CG._

_Five pips, Chloe. Five pips. SH._

_Look, this is freaking me out. You need to call me pronto. CG._

* * *

"This is Chloe."

She had doubled back to Bart's, hoping that maybe she would find Sherlock there. But he wasn't in the mortuary at all, and Molly Hooper wouldn't have cared where he was anyway at this point had Chloe asked.

"Chloe." Sherlock's voice on the other end was strangely soothing, even though his tone was clipped and hurried. "What have you found?"

"I have a name. Maybe a suspect in Carl Powers's murder."

"How…?"

"Reggie Gregson helped me. Anyway, Carl was a huge bully and no one ever did anything because he was the school's top athlete. He tormented everyone…and this boy named Jim Moriarty the most. We found a note…"

"A note? You two went to the house."

"Yeah, and of course his mom was totally oblivious to what kind of awful kid her son was. Anyway, the note said, _Leave me alone. Leave me alone or you'll pay…_"

"Chloe." Sherlock interrupted her.

"Reggie has the note…"

"Chloe. Listen to me." His tone was urgent. "That's enough. Go to your father's and stay there. Mycroft will…"

"Mycroft?" Chloe demanded. "What's your brother go to do with this?"

"Mycroft believes there is some cause for concern, and he's going to be taking you into protective custody. Before you start, it wasn't my decision."

She bit her lip. Mycroft had ways of finding things out, she knew, and in the end, he could be trusted, but still…

"Is everything okay with you?" she asked him. He laughed a bit.

"Everything is fine. I'll text you once this is over…"

"Sherlock." There was a trembling in her voice.

"Yes?"

"Sherlock…just be careful. For once. Please?"

A pause. "I will, Chloe," he promised. "I'll text…"

"_Call."_

"I'll ring you when this is over."

"Okay." She smiled. "I'll talk to you later."

"When this is over." And she heard him begin, "John…" before he hit the end button.

She put her mobile away and picked up her laptop bag. She went outside and hailed a taxi. The cabbie turned to her and asked, "Where to, love?"

Absentmindedly she gave her father's address.

"Consider it done."

She took out her mobile once more and went to check her voicemail messages.

Then she noticed the cabbie close the window through which she'd spoken to him. And she heard the lock click into position.

Then came the gas.

She dropped her mobile and jiggled the door handles, flipped the locking mechanisms. The doors wouldn't budge.

She reached for her mobile again to dial 999.

But before she could hit send, everything faded into blackness.

* * *

_We need to meet. IA._

_No time. SH._

_I've found something out. IA._

_Will ring you soon for time to meet. SH._

_Your friend. IA._

_Which friend? SH._

_Chloe. Is she with you? IA._

_She should be at her father's. SH.._

_She isn't there. IA._

_I have a call coming in. SH._

"Sherlock?"

"Mycroft."

"I'm at the Gaynor house. Where is Miss Gaynor?"

"I told her to meet you there," Sherlock shot back as John looked at him askance.

A cool chuckle from Mycroft. "Perhaps she is simply running behind. I'll look into it, little brother. Keep your focus on finding those plans."

But Sherlock had the sneaking suspicion that his brother was not being forthright with him.

* * *

"Mycroft Holmes."

"Irene Adler-Norton. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Irene was not amused at this, and her tones betrayed the urgency of her call. "Your brother's girlfriend never made it to Primrose Hill?"

"No." Mycroft scrolled through the CCTV footage of Chloe Gaynor on his laptop. "She got into a taxi and…"

His voice trailed off as he watched the footage from the other cameras. The taxi was _not_ driving to Primrose Hill…and he noted a suspicious dark tint to the back windows.

"Mr. Holmes?" Irene's voice sounded almost tinny.

Mycroft quickly regained his bearings. "Mrs. Adler-Norton, I believe we have a situation on our hands concerning Miss Gaynor. Perhaps we could pool our resources to take care of it?"

"He has her, then?"

"I am positive. My brother _does_ have a terrible way of dragging other people into trouble with him."

"I'll bring in some of my operatives. Where do we meet?"

"I'll give you the location…"

**Well, this is almost wrapped up-just maybe 5 chapters more at most. I'm sure I have gone completely AU at this point but that's OK. Of course there will be a sequel; we still have Moriarty on the loose and Moran to go after, right? And of course I'm sure everyone wants to see how Sherlock and Chloe handle their budding romantic relationship. Reviews always welcome! Let me know what you do and don't like, what questions you have, and if I have left anything out while trying to wrap this up. I don't know how I'm doing if you don't tell me! I hope you like my modern interpretation of Gregson; I picture Naomie Harris from "Small Island" portraying her.**


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